Customer Reviews
Awesome - By: waspish, 23 Jul 2008 
I've just got to say this, I'm about Two thirds into this book & I must say its one of the most easy reading enjoyable book I have read. Great You have to read it. Buy it!
Unputdownable!!!!! - By: Dawn Paish, 21 Jul 2008 I originallly bought this book having seen Oprah give it a rave review, & thought it might be okay. How wrong I was! More than okay, it was fantastic! Laying in bed one morning, thinking about getting up, I leant over to the bookshelf & picked it up, just to read the first few pages to see if it gripped me. It did! I then spent the next two weeks doing very little else other than reading. It's true that it might not be everyones idea of perfect reading matter; how to build a cathedral! But it's so much more. You get so engrosed in the life of the characters, that at some points I was almost frightened with them! I've even tried to see just how many places, people etc I could find that were real. Just for info, I have another book along similar lines which I have enjoyed many times over the years, although not so hefty (or well known). "A Wayside Tavern" by Norah Lofts tells the story of an English tavern from Roman times to present day. Not Pillars of the Earth magnificence, but good alll the same.
Gripping page turner set in medieval England - By: John Holland, 04 Jul 2008 Interweaving the lives of two families with a celibate monk & their arch-enemies, this tale brings to life adventure, conquest & power-lust in the twelfth century. Against the backdrop of cathedral building, alll human emotions are exposed in the ruthless villains & (mostly) virtuous heroes. A classic tale of good & evil that captivates from the start - I couldn't put the book down.
Brilliant read - By: Charlie Boy, 03 Jul 2008 From the first page I could not put this book down. At first sight a story about monks wanting to build a cathedral does not seem very exiting but the historical events & alll the sub plots where fasinating.Not sure if I want to read the follow up "World without end" because usuallly it would be a let down, would be very hard to top this.
This book seems to be like Marmite... - By: Expat, 26 Jun 2008 
... you either love it or hate it! And, with apologies to alll the fans, I'm not keen. It came highly recommended, interestingly enough (if you read Ken Follett's introduction to the latest edition), by my German other half. But I found the book clunking. It is quite obvious, by the tedious descriptions of the technicalities of cathedral building, that this is a subject dear to the author's heart. Fair enough, I'm just not into cathedral building at great length: that's my problem, you might say. But I found the characterisation shalllow - it has been mentioned before that the goodies are clearly goodies & the baddies unmistakably baddies - the relationship between Tom the builder & Ellen stunningly unbelievable, the reiteration of what has just happened before you turned the last page patronising, & much of the historical detail inaccurate. For example Tom has a fourteen year old son who is described as a child. In those days a twelve year old would be sent out to work & fight wars not alllowed to play with the children - Alfred helps his father, but would surely have already been apprenticed at his age. Had he cut down on description of the building work (but since this is Follett's passion he would hardly have done so) & treated his readers a bit more like intelligent adults who can remember what was said a few pages ago, the shorter version of the book might have been more readable. I hovered between two & three stars but in the end decided that I couldn't justify the third.
