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?

  • PaulWilzC@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    I definitely agree, this was my least favorite kingsbridge novel by far. My only disagreement was that Hornbeam was actually my favorite character (not saying much because the rest of the characters were so one dimensional whereas hornbeam at least had some depth/backstory). In fact, I would say he is one of the least cartoonishly evil villains of the kingsbridge series (William Hamleigh anyone?). Other than him, none of the characters felt remotely convincing to me. None of the relationships really had any rhyme or reason. Kit and Rodger basically had one scene where Roger defended kit when he was a 6 year old, then they fast forward to them randomly falling in love? Spade/arabella and Amos/Elsie were weak too. Spade and Amos are just Good Guys TM. Elsie likes children and Amos, and did Arabella have a single character trait other than she liked her rose garden? Jane was just Shallow Woman and Sal was just Strong Woman. None of them had any compelling story lines or motivations, and didn’t have much justification for them all being friends, whereas in previous kingsbridge novels it felt more like the characters were woven together through interesting circumstances. The plot just kind of happened with the first two-thirds being about workers rights and the last part about the war.

    I just finished the book tonight and immediately went to see what other people are thinking about the novel, glad I’m not alone in my disappointment.