In the forest just outside Kingsbridge four young children witness a battle between the young knight Thomas Langley and his two pursuers. Langley is saved and decides to take the vows in Kingsbridge priory. In the coming decades, Caris, Gwenda, Merthin and Ralph all try to find their way in the world, never talking about the incident again. Caris desperately wants to become a doctor after her mother’s death but only monks can study medicine. The younger brother Ralph becomes a squire into the household of a knight while the older Merthin is left behind to be a carpenter’s apprentice. And Gwenda is trying to make end’s meet while pursuing an impossible love.
This is an epic story following the descendants of the characters we know from ‘Pillars of the earth’ through the cruel 14th century. The fictitious town of Kingsbridge is again the setting of the book where the cathedral is still towering above everything but the first flaws are discovered in the structure of the building.
Edward II has just been deposed and possibly murdered by his queen Isabella of France in favor of her son Edward III. A war with France is looming around the corner. Serfs are working the fields for their lords. If the harvest is poor, many of them will die of starvation. And then there’s a pandemic which we now refer to as the Black Death. These really are the Dark Ages. Full of war, filth and disease.
If you’ve recently read Pillars, you will discover the characters of World without end are very alike. A character is either bad, like Ralph or Godwyn, or good, like picture perfect Merthin. There seems no in between. Caris and Merthin remind us of Jack and Aliena, but in some way these characters felt more lifelike. Especially Gwenda who suffers a lot, she was my favourite of the lot.
I read Pillars years ago, so I didn’t mind the similarities. Follett uses the same recipe but it works for me. I was absorbed in this cleverly built medieval story about four people and their families. I read Follett for the first time in English but his writing is so easy to read that I was looking forward to my reading time at night. It’s a big book but it didn’t feel like that at all. I wish there were more books like this.
The next book in the series ‘A column of fire’ takes place during Tudor times and is already sitting on my shelves.
Have you read anything by Ken Follett?
In Another Era 
I enjoyed this, but I did find the characters and plot too similar to The Pillars of the Earth. I didn’t like the third book as much and I still have the fourth one, The Evening and the Morning, on my TBR.
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It is similar but the characters are more flawed I think and that makes them more interesting to me. I heard good things about the evening and the morning!
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