Pillars of the Earth

the good

the story moves right along at a jaunty pace, and is compelling enough to make the nearly 1,100 pages not paralyzingly daunting. this one reminds me of the count of monte cristo; a tale of revenge with stark lines between good and bad. the good eventually triumphs, and the bad is really bad. the characters are decently fleshed out, and the author doesn’t pull punches for describing violence. as a work of historical fiction it is somewhat interesting – thematically a bit similar to a Doctorow novel where fictional characters are interspersed and interacting with historical figures who actually lived. also, some interesting dualities, between church and state, brother and brother, men and women. really an epic novel in

the bad

the language is a bit simplistic. try not to pay attention to the sentence variations, otherwise you will be severely distracted by the fact that 80% of the sentences in this book are simple declarative sentences. also, while the characters do have decent, believable characterization, sometimes they can devolve into plot devices. i’m also not sure how historically accurate the social descriptions are though; beyond references to eating knives, the characters feel wholly modern. the women seem to expect some social equality, and maybe that was true, but i have no context here. aliena seems to be able to reinvent herself as a successful business person and then earl-in-stead for her brother.

the ugly

the sex scenes are over the top. i’m no prude, but some of them go on for several pages and are super masculine gaze feeling, like soft core pornos. lots of torquing of nipples, penetration, fucking in public, etc. and how many times does one of the big bads, william, need to rape someone for us to get the idea that he is an unequivocally bad man. also, the plot is contrived. obstacle, overcoming obstacle. over and over. the dramatic tension in building the cathedral is hollow because you know the cathedral gets built; you know the good guys overcome the bad guys because you can tell it’s that sort of novel. you can tell in the way the sentences roll, in the way the first few obstacles by our heroes are overcome, in the pattern of these novels generally.

the verdict

i liked the book, and will probably read the next one. it is pure cotton candy though, but perfect if you are looking for a mindless sort of action adventure type historical fiction thing like the count of monte cristo. i couldn’t help but compare it the name of the rose in the genre of “monastery novels”, a comparison that doesn’t reflect favorably on follett’s novel, but most comparisons to Eco don’t end up a favorable comparison.