A Column of Fire: A Novel

Great book for any fan of Ken Follett's writing. To preface this review, I'm a gigantic fan of Pillars of the Earth. I've read it over a dozen times and consider it one of my favourite books of all time! Personally, for A Column of Fire, I found the story a bit repetitive in regard's to Follett's previous books. The throwbacks to the previous books were shoved into the character's lives in awkward ways and it felt a bit like cheap fan-service. I also just didn't really care about the main characters in the same way I did for most of Follett's bibliography. Maybe it's just because I've been reading a lot of strong writers lately (shoutout to fans of Brandon Sanderson) but, the female characters in this book fell really flat for me. Maybe it's just rose-coloured glasses when looking back on previous Follett books, but I feel like Aliena (and even Caris) were more well-rounded characters than the likes of Margery and Sylvie (I did like Sylvie, I just found her underutilized in the story). In other books, they make you really care about character's parents, extended family (sometimes), and always children. I didn't care about any of the parents or children in this book. They were just supporting characters that made protagonist's lives more difficult by their existence. Regardless of these negative things, I still liked the book a lot. It's always nice to get another viewpoint to a different time in history, and personally I've never actually read much about the fights between Protestants and Catholics, so it was nice to get the insight this book gave. A few of the male characters were pretty interesting. For part of the last quarter of the novel I was enraptured, couldn't pull myself away. It was pretty a nice change to see Follett using his skill writing about spies and treason for an era pre-20th century. There wasn't much of a historical footnote unfortunately, so I'm not sure how accurate the book was but it was at least a fun romp through the world of warring Christianity.

A grander scale, and more characters sharing the limelight than the previous two books, detracts from the expertly crafted intimacy and heroism of the first two books, but only slightly. Still expertly crafted, still exciting, and still an absolute must read for fans of this series.

Books 1 and 2 are far superior. Book 1, the building of the Kingsbridge Cathedral. Book 2, the plague comes to Kingsbridge. Book 3, the political history of Queen Elizabeth, the rise of Protestants, and the Spanish Inquisition. this last book is a recounting of history and lacks the intimacy typically found is Follet's storytelling. Poor character development.