Admittedly, I haven’t read any of Follett’s other works. In fact, I can’t say I’ve heard of him as an author before this. And really, I only decided to read this book because my mum practically pushed it into my lap and said “YOU NEED TO READ THIS!”
I do love myself a good piece of historical fiction though, so really, it wasn’t very difficult to convince me to read.

Also unusual for me, I read the forward by the artist that was in the beginning of the book. Usually I’ll skip things like that and go back and read it after I’m done with the book, but since I knew very little about the writer himself, I decided to read it first. I’m glad I did! The story surrounding how and why the book was written I found quite interesting; he’s known for his thriller fictions, and he just so happens to have a passion for cathedrals and wanted to write about them. For some reason this greatly increased my interest in the book. Probably from personal experience with paper writing, I know that when you’re writing about a topic that really interests you, it tends to be better.

And boy was it! Follett is a master story-teller. This is a long read and there are a lot of characters to keep track of, but Follett handles it effortlessly. They all interweave with each other nicely and their development makes for some very touching and memorable characters. I’m a sucker for strong, capable females and Ellen, for example, is just that.
I even found myself quite fond of Philip and Tom Builder, and Jack and so many of the other major characters.

Aside from the gripping storyline, Follett’s description of medieval life is rich, and he manages to touch on the lives of many different levels of society and illustrates just how much they relied and affected each other. I have no idea how much research he put into the writing of this book, so I don’t know how historically accurate it is, but boy – if life was as volatile as Follett describes, it’s a wonder any cathedrals managed to get built at all!

The whole novel flowed very smoothly, and it was a joy to read. It picked up in pace gradually as stories began to intersect with each other, and I found I had a difficult time putting the book down. In fact, the only places where he began to lose my interest were the moments when he would go off on extensive tangents describing and glorifying the cathedrals themselves. These were hardly anything I could hold him against doing since it clearly was his passion, and they were easily skipped over if I felt they began to drag on.

I’d definitely recommend this book to be read. Luckily my Dad picked up the sequel to this book as well (World Without End) so I’ve got plans to read that in the near future!