It was your stereotypical sequel failure…it takes something that was wrapped up nicely and expands on it in a way that offers nothing new while also giving you a lackluster repetition of what worked in the first one. Or as I like to call it…an obvious cash grab.

A student recommended the first book to me, and it quickly became one of my most recommended historical fictions for my students because it’s one of the most thoroughly, perfectly researched books I’ve read in the genre…and it helps that it has a soap opera drama which also happens to illustrate major contextual details and themes for the time period.

It’s one thing to tell people how massive an undertaking, how violent a process, how often disastrous the result, how through transformed a region could be by, and how politically tricky it was building cathedrals in the middle ages, but having this character driven story makes that lesson intensely human and relatable - which is exactly what historians do, find the human story in the details.

I’m waitlisted (and I got on the list about a month before it dropped… That’s how popular it is) for the latest book in the series on Libby and I just can’t wait, lol. I’m number 8, so hopefully in the next few weeks.

Literary fiction is like that nursery rhyme, when it’s good, it’s very good, when it’s bad, it’s awful. I don’t think you’re not smart enough for literary fiction, but I might have found some authors that weren’t smart enough for literary fiction, lol.

The discussion for this book was my last straw for a book club I was in for about a half a year. I was the only one who thoroughly disliked it. The thing that was crazy about it was that it was obvious that everybody else in the book club had already read the book multiple times, thought of it as one of their favorites, and would defend it to their grave. I guess I’m just old fashioned in my perspective that book clubs shouldn’t be a bunch of people sitting around gushing over their most favorite, repeat reads… That’s what fan clubs are for.