I have loved Ken Follett ever since I stumbled on ‘Pillars of the Earth’ while wandering through the Montreal central library after two days of a brutal Bar exam. He’s fairly formulaic but I thought this was part of his charm, until I read ‘The Armour of Light’.

It just felt like everything was a gross caricature of his signature style: the main antagonist was cartoonishly villainous for no reason, the romantic relationships just happened without rhyme or reason (or depth!), the social changes were…emotionless? I don’t know how to describe what was lacking. Compared to the Fall of the Giants cycle, where you did get genuinely engaged with the labour struggles of the working class characters, everything just felt trite in this book.

I think I’m just going to pretend that only the two first books of that series exist now.

Anyone else feeling let down by this one?

  • Eireika@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    the main antagonist was cartoonishly villainous for no reason, the romantic relationships just happened without rhyme or reason (or depth!), the social changes were…emotionless?

    So, Follett as usual?
    Pillars of the Earth were eintertaining enough to forgive things that I grow to hate in historical fiction (good guys having social mores out of XXI century (unless they do want to expose the newborn because reasons) and bad guys being some sort of caricature). But all his books repeat the same tropes wihout novelty.