World Without End: Ken Follett Drops the Other Shoe

A short while ago, I wrote an article about the author, Ken Follett, in which I emphasized what I believe to be his greatest work to date: The Pillars of the Earth. In that article, I threatened to treat with his excellent sequel to that book, World Without End. Well, here we are.

When I say World Without End is a sequel, I mean it is a sequel in terms of place only. The more recent novel is set in a time two centuries ahead of the earlier one, so all the characters who managed to survive the first of the two books would still have been long gone. The sequel does point out how some of the characters were related to the ones from its predecessor.

The story opens in the momentous year 1327, when King Edward II was deposed in favor of his son (Edward III), then imprisoned and murdered, though the details of that latter event are somewhat unclear-a situation that Follett somehow exploits. You will have to read the book to find out how.

Edward II, by all reckoning, was a bad king. While he was not the weak, gay fop he is depicted to be in the movie Braveheart, he was, because of that, an even worse king than the movie implies. He was almost certainly bisexual (He did father five children.), but it was for political reasons he was deposed. Along that same line, by the way, his dad, Edward the Longshanks, was bad news to the Scots (and the Welsh) in real life, but the English considered him a reasonably just ruler.

Three other things beside the royal succession overlay the personal stories in this novel and have a major effect on its main characters. One is the Hundred-Years' War. Another is the atmosphere of religious intolerance that had begun to pervade most of Christianity in the 14^th Century. That was the era of the Spanish Inquisition, for example. And, while British society was not quite so dogmatic and barbaric, there was plenty of fertile ground for persecution.

The biggest of the three historical events, we do not see until we are well into the story: the Black Plague that wiped out at least a quarter of Europe's population.

All that said, this is not a story about war, dogma or even plague. It is a very personal story of a selected group of people in the fictitious town of Kingsbridge, trying to lead lives which are often brutally difficult to lead, where their biggest enemies are frequently, not bad kings or popes or disease-carrying rats, but their own neighbors and relations.

As with the earlier book, there are so many riveting plot twists, I do not want to indulge in any more spoilage than I already have. All I can say is that this book will keep you as spellbound as its predecessor, even if it requires you to meet a whole different bunch of people. Also, as with the earlier book, Follett plays fast-and-loose with an important bit of history, but, then, he never claimed to be writing a history book. These two novels are works of historical fiction, with the emphasis on the latter.

For my part, I am looking forward to Follett's upcoming novel, Fall of Giants, which deals with a number of people caught up in the First World War. Unlike his many other war stories, though, this one is not a spy thriller, but, rather, promises to be the same kind of look into complex peoples' complex lives that his recent novels have provided so well.

The book is not due out until September of this year, so you have plenty of time to read and enjoy World Without End before wading into that next project.

As ever, thank you for your continued loyalty to the printed word.

Sources

World Without End by Ken Follett

Wikipedia

ken-follett.com