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?
I loved his recent-ish contemporary thriller Never.
Oh, good to know! I’ve only ever read his historical novels (including A Dangerous Fortune and Jackdaws).
He wrote a few airport-style thrillers that weren’t too shabby but honestly I couldn’t put Never down! Some of the recent historical stuff seems phoned in.
Oh, I don’t know. I thought Never was no more than unlikely. The thing I like about Follett is his meticulous historical detailing that he weaves so brilliantly into the narrative. His pure fiction books lack that. Even Eye of the Needle was historically accurate,
Same!! Never was fantastic storytelling and very relevant for today (scarily relevant to today unfortunately). I really liked the characters and their story lines and it all felt unsettlingly plausible. The ending was one of the most emotionally impactful moments in any book I’ve ever read. I’m glad to have read this recently, otherwise I would be worried that he was losing his touch after reading Armor of Light which is by far my least favorite of his books
The ending!!! 🙀🙀🙀🙀