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Product Description: Ken Follett has 90 million readers worldwide. The Pillars of the Earth is his bestselling book of all time. Now, eighteen years after the publication of The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett has written the most anticipated sequel of the year-World Without End.
Unabridged edition read by John Lee
Amazon.com Review: Ken Follett has 90 million readers worldwide. The Pillars of the Earth is his bestselling book of all time. Now, eighteen years after the publication of The Pillars of the Earth, Ken Follett has written the most-anticipated sequel of the year, World Without End.
In 1989 Ken Follett astonished the literary world with The Pillars of the Earth, a sweeping epic novel set in twelfth-century England centered on the building of a cathedral and many of the hundreds of lives it affected. Critics were overwhelmed--"it will hold you, fascinate you, surround you" (Chicago Tribune)--and readers everywhere hoped for a sequel.
World Without End takes place in the same town of Kingsbridge, two centuries after the townspeople finished building the exquisite Gothic cathedral that was at the heart of The Pillars of the Earth. The cathedral and the priory are again at the center of a web of love and hate, greed and pride, ambition and revenge, but this sequel stands on its own. This time the men and women of an extraordinary cast of characters find themselves at a crossroad of new ideas--about medicine, commerce, architecture, and justice. In a world where proponents of the old ways fiercely battle those with progressive minds, the intrigue and tension quickly reach a boiling point against the devastating backdrop of the greatest natural disaster ever to strike the human race--the Black Death.
Three years in the writing, and nearly eighteen years since its predecessor, World Without End breathes new life into the epic historical novel and once again shows that Ken Follett is a masterful author writing at the top of his craft.
Questions for Ken Follett
Amazon.com: What a phenomenon The Pillars of the Earth has become. It was a bestseller when it was published in 1989, but it's only gained in popularity since then--it's the kind of book that people are incredibly passionate about. What has it been like to see it grow an audience like that?
Follett: At first I was a little disappointed that Pillars sold not much better than my previous book. Now I think that was because it was a little different and people were not sure how to take it. As the years went by and it became more and more popular, I felt kind of vindicated. And I was very grateful to readers who spread the news by word of mouth.
Amazon.com:Pillars was a departure for you from your very successful modern thrillers, and after writing it you returned to thrillers. Did you think you'd ever come back to the medieval period? What brought you to do so after 18 years?
Follett: The main reason was the way people talk to me about Pillars. Some readers say, "It’s the best book I’ve ever read." Others tell me they have read it two or three times. I got to the point where I really had to find out whether I could do that again.
Amazon.com: In World Without End you return to Kingsbridge, the same town as the previous book, but two centuries later. What has changed in two hundred years?
Follett: In the time of Prior Philip, the monastery was a powerful force for good in medieval society, fostering education and technological advance. Two hundred years later it has become a wealthy and conservative institution that tries to hold back change. This leads to some of the major conflicts in the story.
Amazon.com:World Without End features two strong-willed female characters, Caris and Gwenda. What room to maneuver did a medieval English town provide for a woman of ambition?
Follett: Medieval people paid lip-service to the idea that women were inferior, but in practice women could be merchants, craftspeople, abbesses, and queens. There were restrictions, but strong women often found ways around them.
Amazon.com: When you sit down to imagine yourself into the 14th century, what is the greatest leap of imagination you have to make from our time to theirs? Is there something we can learn from that age that has been lost in our own time?
Follett: It’s hard to imagine being so dirty. People bathed very rarely, and they must have smelled pretty bad. And what was kissing like in the time before toothpaste was invented?
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
Rating: - A MAJOR DISAPPOINTMENT
I read "Pillars of the Earth" during the Summer 1991; its plot and characters bled into my life that summer. I carried them around no matter where I went. I so LOVED this novel. When "World Without End" came out, I was delighted, but decided to wait for the paperback (reading a hardbound book that size in bed is challenging). Anyway, as I nestled into bed during the Christmas holidays, I began the novel with high expectations.
Alas, what a disappointment. The writing is humdrum and poor. The author had to keep explaining the characters' motives and the responses to them. Does he consider his readers to be totally stupid? His sentence structure was so very boring. The plot was like a TV miniseries: perhaps enticing, but lacking depth. Godwyn became more shallow as he became more evil. Ralph was a cardboard, one-dimensional character.
I could go on and on about my complaints. Suffice it to say: Shame on this author. I think that Follett was "stuffing the novel" to make his deadline and collect his money. He left this reader utterly unimpressed.
Rating: - great book, didnt want it to end
an excellent read. Didn't want it to end and had trouble putting it down. I would definitely recommend reading the Pillars of the Earth first.
Rating: - Compelling Historical Fiction
I had never read any of Follet's work before this book. Initially, I had trouble getting into this book because Follet's prose really rubbed me the wrong way. I found the characters and plot to be immediately compelling but sometimes the overly simplistic, almost childish, writing style was so bad as to take me out of the story altogether. However, this problem lessened and gradually disappeared over the course of the story as the characters aged. Perhap's Follet was experimenting with trying to match the narrative to the age of the characters. I found this distracting but as I said it was only apparent for the first bit of the book.
A lot of people have hopped all over this book for historical inaccuracies. yes, the book is written in modern English with modern sounding dialogue. Hello people - this book's timeframe is contemporary to that of Chaucer, the middle of the 14th century. Of course Follet didn't write in Middle English. Has anyone tried reading the Canterbury Tales in its original form? It's not impossible but a novel written in Middle English would hardly be bestseller material.
I'll grant that the whole Merthin/Caris plot is highly implausible, placing twentieth century ideas and morality onto a medieval setting. I'm aware of this and it doesn't bother as much as it did some people. After all it is Historical FICTION not a history book.
When it comes to the actual historical details surrounding Feudal lordship and serfdom I found this book to be very useful. Professors can spout off all they want about feudal labor, serfs, labor shortages, free tenancy, and higher wages resulting from depopulation but all these ideas are rather vague and abstract to the twety-first century mind. this book did an excellent job of putting these abstract concepts into a the framework of practical examples using the characters in the story. I feel like I am able to better visualize the day to day workings of feudalism because of it.
All in all I enjoyed this book. It wasn't the best book I ever read and it certainly wasn't 100% realistic but I found the characters to be compelling and the plot to be engrossing. I especially praise the depth of Follet's characters; I hated the villians with a passion and was rooting for the good guys - which is what I want from this type of book. However, at that the characters weren't cardboard cutouts. The good guys had flaws and the bad guys could be sympathetic on occasion.
It's a pretty quick read for 1000 pages and I was never bored.
Rating: - Great follow-up to Pillars
This was a good book, well written and able to keep my interest. I must confess that I enjoyed Pillars of the Earth better, but this was still very well done.
Rating: - world without end/book
This is the sequal to Pillars of the Earth. I was looking forward to reading this book.
Exciting, interesting and it provided many hours of reading. Learning about history and the making is fun and a good way to pass time.
Ken Follett keeps you reading unitl you find you are at the end of the book and still wanting to learn more.
Amazon.com: What a phenomenon The Pillars of the Earth has become. It was a bestseller when it was published in 1989, but it's only gained in popularity since then--it's the kind of book that people are incredibly passionate about. What has it been like to see it grow an audience like that? 
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