*** NO SPOILERS *** THIS REVIEW IS SAFE TO READ IF YOU HAVEN'T EVEN OPENED THE BOOK

Well, I am one of those people who thought Pillars of the Earth was one of the two or three best books I've ever read. I've read Pillars five times in total, pretty much once every few years since its initial publication. Pillars had a certain magical quality - a combination of riveting storytelling, larger than life characters, grand themes of religion, destiny, history, and morality, strong women, love, hate, redemption, and so on. Naturally, the question on my mind in purchasing World Without End was, since most sequels are bad, could this one possibly overcome the track record of sequels and deliver a reading experience similar to Pillars? Frankly, every sequel I've ever read for books I loved (case in point: Shogun) left me quite disappointed. So I was wary, though Ken Follett has provided me so many hours of reading pleasure over the years that I allowed myself to be hopeful.

Here's the bottom line. World Without End is a good book, and worth reading if you loved Pillars. It is not Pillars, but it's still a solid read. I will quickly net out the Pillars comparison for those who want to know how it stacks up. It has lots and lots of interesting history and "feel" for the time period, which I greatly enjoy. At the same time, World Without End does not have the same gravitas as Pillars had. Where Pillars had a handful of charasmatic characters who were archetypes of universal themes of the human condition and who were larger than life, World Without End has a seemingly endless procession of characters who are just life-sized. WWE has a secret as Pillars did; however, the secret is not a Terrible Secret on the grand scale of Pillars, just one of the many thousands of secrets that have transpired through the ages and been long forgotten. Where Pillars was about the grandeur and otherworldliness of building a cathedral, WWE concerns us with the utilitarian issue of constructing a bridge - more of an engineering problem than a transcendental challenge. I didn't care about the characters in WWE in the same way I cared about them in Pillars. That said, WWE is good storytelling. I have read ALL of Follett's books, and he spins a great yarn every time; no exception here. The enjoyment of escaping into another time and place is all here, just like in Pillars, though it's somehow less compelling. With Pillars I stayed up for three or four nights and missed a day or two of work, because I simply could not put the book down. This book requires more of a commitment, because it's not that hard to put down. When I finished Pillars I would've paid 10 times the cost of the book for another 100 pages; with WWE, by the time the book ended, I was done and ready to go back to other stuff.

One of the problems with having written the Best Book Ever is that, by definition, the next one won't be as good. That is the case here. But is it fair to expect the Best Book Ever to be superceded by the Even Better Best Book Ever? There is no sequel to Pillars, in the same way that you can't have a second first-love. There's only one first love; all the rest after that is fine-tuning and possbly recapturing bits and pieces of the initial thrill, but to expect the magic of your first fomance to repeat itself all over again is unrealistic and likely to lead to unnecessary disappointment. World Without End is a good four star book, and can be enjoyed on its own merit.

Well, take this review with a grain of salt since I only read the first quarter of the book then skimmed to see
what happened to the characters. (sure there's rape, destruction and black plague but trust me its reads like a bad tv movie or daytime soap opera)

Okay (deep breath) first off, I am torn to admit this, and I hate to cap on such a tome of work, but this
book has none of the depth and meaning of Pillars.

I believe every author has 1 masterpiece in him; (Follett, Pillars. King, The Stand. Mccammon, Swan Song.
Steinbeck, Grapes of Wrath. you get the picture.
And Pillars was magnificient.
But this one does not even compare. But I am forgiving and will read Follett again, but you should pass on this one lest it ruin your memories of Pillars.
Either I've changed as a reader or he's changed as a writer. Oh well
If you want believable riveting fantasy historical fiction try George RR Martin's series
Sincerely Bookworm the Villain

Wow, wow, wow. What a terrific read. No, it isn't "War and Peace" or "Ulysses," just a good, old fashioned story. Follett is at his best (and that's pretty durn good). It's a whopping thousand pages long, and I devoured it in a weekend. My rear end may hurt, but I had a great time. "World Without End" is a worthy successor to "Pillars of the Earth."