World Without End at an End

I finally finished World Without End this weekend. No TV has done wonders for my recreational reading.

Overall, I enjoyed the book. It's been awhile since I've read Pillars of the Earth, but from what I remember, World isn't quite as good as its predecessor. Where Pillars combined court intrigue, Machiavellian politics, and cathedral building, World focused more on medieval economics and the plague. The plot was good but I found the characters too idealized. The good guys were really good and the bad really bad with little nuance between the extremes. Gwenda was probably the greyest character in the book and she was a secondary character at best. I also thought the ending felt a bit rushed. The book weighs in at 1,000 pages, and yet I couldn't shake the feeling that Follett hit page 999 and said to himself, "Holy crap, I need to wrap this baby up in the next five pages." Still, I do recommend the book to fans of historical fiction.

My father-in-law left Hornet's Flight here from last Christmas, so I'll read that next. I probably shouldn't read back-to-back Follett books, but I'm a sucker for WWII fiction.