Books: World Without End and Pillars of the Earth

I got almost all the way to Scotland and back with my knitting in my carry-on, but in Glasgow, coming home, they told me my knitting needles would not make it through security and that I'd have to check them. To be fair, they were kind enough to tell me so before I checked my bag, so I put them in the suitcase and pouted. I then indulged myself in buying two new books, including this one by Ken Follett, sequel to his Pillars of the Earth, which I had finished while on vacation. I actually started the first book before vacation officially started, which made for a bit of a problem, because I couldn't put the book down to do things like pack, so I packed very quickly the morning we left (but I didn't forget anything, so it was all good).

Pillars of the Earth was good, a very compelling story, a real page-turner. The Professor's entire family had been encouraging me to read it for years, and I was glad that I finally did. I liked most of the characters, except the evil villains of course, who I dutifully despised. I thought the story was well-crafted and interesting. A nice healthy serving good triumphing over evil in the end.

World Without End was equally compelling. I couldn't put it down and read it very quickly for the 1,111-page book that it was. It was a bit too similar to the original for me to enjoy it quite as much. It was much easier to know what was coming because of all the parallels, and that dampened my enthusiasm but only a little, because I still gobbled it up. It took a lot longer for good to triumph over evil in the second book, there were fewer swings of the pendulum between good guys and bad guys prevailing, and one of the main bad guys in the second book was not a guy at all but the plague. Sure, it's historically accurate, but watching everyone get killed off by a disease is much less satisfying than seeing them get their come-uppance in a more fitting manner, as they did in the first book. Still, it was good, and I recommend it to anyone looking to escape his or her life for a few days.