The Evening and the Morning

If I had sixteen hats, I’d take them all off for Ken Follett’s new book, this ‘prequel’ to The Pillars of the Earth. I didn’t enjoy A Column of Fire, the third book in the Kingsbridge series; it read to me as though he’d lost interest well before the end and just bashed the words out to meet the deadline. That is not the case with The Evening and the Morning.

It’s got all the qualities that made both Pillars and World Without End so compulsively readable; fascinating period details – how to build a house or a ferry; the use of slaves; the forging of currency – likeable leads and genuinely unpleasant villains.

I think it may be this last feature that holds a reader’s attention. (It’s certainly the case with me; I put aside everything yesterday so I could make it through the last 200 pages. I had to find out how they would be beaten.)

And they are. (Another factor in the success of the Kingsbridge series is that they are, ultimately, very reassuring. They don’t possess the bleakness of A Game of Thrones.) But that doesn’t prevent KF from painting a really vivid picture of a world in which venality, greed and violence can triumph, and in which power can so easily be abused. You read on, transfixed by the ruthlessness of the latest evil act, and then you have to keep reading to find out how the good characters will find a way to counter it.

And on it goes, with some fresh – and usually totally unexpected - plot twist popping up every few pages. If nothing else, I’m impressed by KF’s powers of invention: he finds a way to make something new happen in every chapter... and he keeps this up for 900 pages. The pace never flags. It's a fabulous piece of storytelling.