Review: "A Column of Fire," by Ken Follett

It seems the consensus among Kingsbridge fans is that A Column of Fire is their least favourite. I agree. Forgive my corniness, but A Column of Fire just didn't have the flame the previous two books in the series had. Ken Follett, one of the best-selling authors in history, has never been considered as a spectacular writer. This holds true again in this latest novel. Follett writes quick-paced scenes. His sentences remain as stilted as ever. His words are rigid, and perhaps this evens gives a certain flavour to the historical novels. But for me, it makes it a bit of a tough slog to get through some 1000 pages or so. Of the three Kingsbridge novels, I had the hardest time getting through this one; as you may notice, I took me nearly a month and a half to complete it. Why? There are two main reasons this book didn't hold up to the previous two novels. 1. Kingsbridge itself. The city, made famous by its cathedral, is largely absent in this book. One of the things that made the previous two books spectacular was the way Follett weaved his knowledge on cathedral building into the books. The cathedral itself is only really mentioned a couple of times. To Follett's credit, he does effortlessly weave historical knowledge into this book, but it has more to with the power dynamics of the world at the time. 2. Character. Unlike the previous books, I really didn't carethat much about these characters. In particular, the Ned-Margery arch didn't really work for me. I didn't feel that these two people cared enough for one another; I didn't feel that they cared enough when they couldn't be with one another. Further, I didn't despise some of the "bad guys" like I did in the other novels. Perhaps the main antagonist in the novel is Pierre, but I just didn't loathe him like I wanted to. One of the things that made Pillars and Without End work were the dramatic conflicts between the good and bad. Column struggled with that. I found myself wanting to see more of the Barney and Rollo story-lines, but found they were lacking. I think the book could have drawn more on those story-lines to increase the tension and conflict throughout the narrative. But, since we didn't see a lot of Barney and Rollo, their two story-lines felt almost arbitrary and random. Part of me thinks we only saw Barney go to the "New World" because it is setting us up for a book or series where Follett takes us to the New World with a whole new cast. Column of Fire might have needed another thousand pages to do it justice. Column jumped too quickly in spots. There would be chapters upon chapters where the narration is well-paced. Then, all of a sudden, we jump ahead a year (or in some places ten years) and certain characters are dead and married to new people. I found it hard to get on board with accepting the rationale of this at times. Also, people fall in love just too damn fast in this novel (ie Ned and Sylvie). Largely, this major fault of the book was its scope. It was too expansive, too spread out over a large area, for the reader to really get involved in the characters. It ventured too far outside of Kingsbridge, which is where the heart of this series is. Perhaps it's time to retire Kingsbridge. Perhaps it's time to sail across the ocean to the New World.