World Without End, a follow-up to Ken Follett’s surprise bestseller Pillars of the Earth, steals a page from the Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure playbook. A motley collection of insipid characters – if possible, even stupider and less realistic than Bill & Ted – get into a time machine and travel back to year 1327 and the village of Kingsbridge… Wait. Oh, wait. There are no time machines? The characters in World Without End are supposed to represent actual people from the 14th century? Well. I

Well, Pillars of the Earth is one of my favorite books and I was looking forward to completely enjoying this without reservation. But way back when it first came out, I stumbled onto an online discussion that cited a passage with anachronistic vocabulary, which bothered me. It was very anachronistic. So it was a single passage, but it added some reservation to my anticipated complete enjoyment. And then I got to page 15, and there's this conversation that no two people would ever have under any

World Without End (Kingsbridge #2), Ken FollettWorld Without End is a best-selling 2007 novel by Welsh author Ken Follett. It is the second book in the Kingsbridge Series, and is the sequel to 1989's The Pillars of the Earth. The novel begins in the fictional city of Kingsbridge, England in the year 1327. Four children - Merthin, Caris, Gwenda, and Merthin's brother Ralph - head into the woods on All Hallows Day. Together the children witness two men-at-arms killed in self-defence by Sir Thomas

"As it was in the beginningit is now and ever shall be World Without EndAmen..." Initial Thoughts Ken Follett is back and my word does he mean business with his sensational sequel to his historical blockbuster "Pillars of the Earth."  The first was a book that took my breath away. Easily one of my top reads of 2021 and I was fired up for some more high stakes historical fiction. Would it live up to Pillars of the Earth? Probably not, but I was expecting big things.The first installment was

Put some towels down because I sense a fully formed gush geyser about to spill all over this review. This book was fantastic and really did it for me. I loved it, all 1000+ pages, and I wouldn’t have minded if it was considerably longer (TWSS). After more than loving The Pillars of the Earth (that’s right, I lurved it), I had tall hopes for this sorta sequel and let me tell you it was more than up to the task. I was parched and hungry for a good meaty read. Well consider me gorged and my story

“Whether I’ve been good or bad, I don’t think God will be fooled by a last-minute change of heart.” ‘’World Without End’’ is the second installment in Follett’s Kingsbridge series and what a world it is….Set during one of the most turbulent times in European History, amidst the beginning of the Hundred Years’ War and the nightmare of the Black Death that swept over the continent causing the deaths of an unthinkable percentage of the population, it is one more example of why Historical Fiction

WORLD WITHOUT END BY KEN FOLLETT: There are books that you read, with vaguely interesting stories, that sometimes within less than a month have been forgotten, ignored, barely recollected except for title, author and a minor recall of plot. Then there are books that change your mind on life, that give you a thrill as you read them and think about how much you’re loving to read this particular book, and how it’s making such an impression on you, and how you’re going to remember it for a long part...

Set two centuries after Pillars of the Earth, the people of Kingsbridge are at it again. The cathedral built in Pillars is in disrepair after part of the roof caved in, the bridge collapsed, and the prior is dead. Also, the constant maneuvering continues...So, I fell into a trap with this one. After devouring Dinocalypse Now in a morning, my girlfriend asked if I managed to read an entire book in four hours. I said I had and she slammed me with this, saying it shouldn't take me more than a few d...

5 stars to Ken Follett's World Without End. One of my favorite books of all time... I was just mesmerized by the characters and everything they went thru. It is a MUST read.It's a long read, and it takes place hundreds of years ago, but if you can handle the primitive nature of the timeline, the various plots and subplots will astound you. Amazing.I kept getting angry at all the tragedy thrown at the two main characters. How could they suffer so much. And for years. I'll stop there as I don't wa...

This "companion" novel to Follett's 1989 classic The Pillars of the Earth is set in the same community, 200 years later. I'd been excited about it ever since I heard it was coming out this fall - Maybe too excited, because it just didn't live up to my expectations.The first half of the book seemed a sort-of ho-hum retread of "Pillars". In place of Jack Builder, we have his look-alike great-great-great-many-times-over grandson, Merthin. Instead of Aliena, we get Caris (who I wanted to slap severa...

A truly delightful read. I really enjoyed the background of the story; the characters (mostly) and how Follett used the story (1300's) to show emerging attitudes ie to the church and medicine.The setting is 1300s in the reign of Edward 11. We see the changing of people's attitudes. This is shown mostly in treatment of the sick, attitude to land usage and the power of the church and state. The emergence of sick people treatment from bleeding and dung mixture wound treatments: to treatment with cl...

Follet conjures up another masterpiece with World Without End, as he achieves near-nirvana by writing a spellbinding story that is captivating from page 1 until 1000! I was just a lonely lad, ignorant to the brilliance of Ken Follett until my father suggested I read Pillars of the Earth. My world just about shattered!! ‘Pillars’ is easily one of my top 5 fav books of all times! In ‘Pillars’, we see Follett’s genius shine on: the story is so captivating, with strong willed characters and narrati...

Oh, what a long read it was, but no regrets - the book is really good. I was fascinated reading The Pillars of the Earth and "World Without End" enchanted me from the first pages. „World Without End“ is considered the sequel to „Pillars of the Earth“, though none of the original characters reappear. However the descendants of the main family in “Pillars of the Earth” gather to tell the new story about Kingsbridge and the people tied to it. Beginning two centuries after "The Pillars of the Earth"...

In all practical theory, this book should be on my 'Sucked' shelf. It's a tale of the Middle Ages, the gross injustices of the time, and it truly amounts to a thousand-page Medieval soap opera. It hasn't got much to do with its predecessor The Pillars of the Earth , except that it's in the same location 200 years later, with characters that are "descendants" of the Pillars characters. There's none of the complex building and architectural aspects found in Pillars, the graphic sex and violence...

Book 2 in the Knightsbridge series first published 2007.Calling this a book would be a mistake; it’s a tome, but a highly entertaining tome for sure.In reality what this is, is a medieval version of ‘The Bold and The Beautiful’. For those of you that are unfamiliar with this TV show it’s a daytime soap opera.This book has all the ingredients that make for a successful soap opera. There is murder, lying, cheating, conniving, back stabbing, lots of bastards, the biblical and non biblical types, gr...

We who are born poor have to use cunning to get what we want. Scruples are for the privileged. I must confess-- I am addicted to these Ken Follett novels. I finished World Without End and had to pick up A Column of Fire immediately. I'm also going to get to his Century trilogy at some point. These books are bloodstained historical soap operas and I just can't get enough.Follett knows how to create exactly the right amount of drama and set it to the gory backdrop of history. I've always loved

Here’s a book that completely copies the first book in the series. Here’s a book that follows the same sense of narrative progression, character development and resolution as it predecessor. It is one who's characters bear a striking resemblance to their ancestors in terms of individual personality and their place within the story; yet, for all the repetition, Follett churns out an equally as engrossing story as that of The Pillars of the Earth.What have I to complain about? This is one of those...

World Without End is written in the third person but isn't choppy like some third person books are. I loved that we get to see the characters grow up and mature. They all encounter hardships (war, death, disappointed hopes and dreams, the black plague) but never stop fighting and never give up hope. I really enjoyed reading about the advances in medicine and what people believed to be cures (bloodletting, poultices made with dung, balancing the "humours" of the body). Physicians believed that di...