Book review!...

You may recall a while back I posted Al's Top 10 List of books to read. From among them, I chose Guns, Germs, and Steel to start with. He had warned that it was "extensive and exhaustive" and that it may be best to read it in short doses. Right he was! It is extremely informative about the evolutions of societies around the world, and has proved to be very interesting. And exhaustive. So I took a break when I received World Without End as a Christmas present.

Now I'm not a literary critic but just a leisurely reader, so I can only offer my opinions as such.

World Without End by Kenneth Follett is a sequel to The Pillars of the Earth, which he wrote like 18 or so years ago. From reviews that I read I gathered that his fans repeatedly asked him to write another similar to the Pillars book, and so he provided them one.

The World book is set in the same town as the first, but 200 years later. The characters are descendants of those in the first book, and their personalities are almost mirrored in the sequel. The character Merthin is almost identical to Jack, an intelligent builder ahead of his time, and who will do anything for his lifelong love, a woman who is almost unobtainable. Caris is the same as Aliena, a headstrong woman who becomes a wooler and business owner and saves the town, and who never compromises what she feels is her duty, carrying the world on her shoulders. Ralph is the same as the cruel William, the raping and pillaging warrior, and ever the antagonist. There are other similar characters, but you get the point.

While the story is slightly different due to the Black Plague being the main focus of the second half of the novel, I can't get past the characters being identical to the first book. Don't get me wrong, I still enjoyed the book and couldn't hardly put it down. But as sequels go, it was just a little too close to the first story. I mean, yes I know it was medieval times, so the same problems were prevalent for many hundreds of years (starving, sickness, land rights, merchant rights, control by the church, yadda yadda) so you can only do so much with a story to make it different. But still...

All that being said, I do recommend World Without End. It is an interesting story, and gives such a descriptive view of life in that period of time. So yes, run out and buy it, it's worth it. Just don't be surprised if it seems like déjà vu if you've read the predecessor.

Alright, now back to the Germs book.