The Pillars of the Earth

Firstly, the book is over long, at over 1000 pages. The author keeps introducing more and more plot elements which one wonders how they contribute, it could have ended nicely several times earlier!Its wordy and verbose, and the narrative is actually predictable and cliched.It reminded me of a pantomime sometimes, with the "baddies" constantly against "the goodies", one could almost imagine booing at certain passages.The sex scenes are poorly written to be honest, and quite cringe-worthy at times. The first scene with Tom and Ellen on page 72 is quite ridiculous.Others have cited several inaccuracies, and the speech is very modern - did they really say "awesome" for example?On the plus side, the book is historically accurate and mostly holds ones attention. He has obviously done his research.Parts of the book are good to read, and hold the attention, but I wouldn't call it "A Classic Masterpiece"!

I read the blurb of this book and thought it wasn't for me, and so I reluctantly started to read this mammoth historical fiction as a favour to my mother who was unwavering in her insistence that I would love it. All I can say is that I was wrong and she was right!This book read like a film/movie in my head. It was absolutely nothing like I had expected and was all absorbing from start to finish. An easy to read epic classic.An astounding five star read from start to finish.

Recommended this book by a friend. He is no longer my friend.1000 pages of boredom, not sure what the reason was to write this book, it’s not a love story, historical drama or blood and guts medieval battle account. It’s just about a bloke who gets hungry, finds a job, his son burns down a cathedral, he rebuilds it and then gets killed by the bad guy. The bad guy is eventually out witted by the cathedral prior and is hung. There, I’ve saved you 3 months.

Wonderful book also its companion book World Without End. Have read both and enjoyed them before buying for my son who is now reading one of them. They are long books but give insight into how this country was a long while ago. Also after reading and visiting various cathedrals in England it is appreciated how incredibly clever the people were to build such wonderful buildings without today's technology. Also it is appreciated how hard lives were then and in contrast how much easier our lives are today.Ken Follett must have done an immense amount of research in order to write such brilliant books.

I was told by several people that I would LOVE this book, so purchased all three in the series. I barely got thro Pillars of the Earth.. I found it flat and that the characters had absolutely no depth - certainly by the end of the book I was glad to see the back of the characters, I had no empathy for any of them at all. It was also that the writing wasn't 'correct' somehow. I mean 12th century Englishmen did not use the phrase 'pretty good'..? I left my mum with the other two books, I won't read them. Really disappointed.. I wanted to like it.