After I read Ken Follet’s ‘World without End’ (WWE), I didn’t think I would have the commitment to read a similar book. But when my sister praised Follet’s ‘Pillars of the Earth’ (the prequel to World Without End), I decided it might be worth the while to undertake another long journey. The 1000+ pages in small print was not as daunting as I first imagined them to be…each page I turned seemed to embroil me deeper in the lives of the characters and experience their trials and tribulations like they were my own.

The story is set in the early part of the 12th century and chronicles the lives of different protagonists in the town of Kingsbridge. The story revolves around the building of a mighty cathedral, though they are many interceding stories around the nobility, the peasantry and the clergy.

Having read WWE, I could feel traces of the writing style repeating itself…the little interlacing stories, the unexpected connections between the lead characters, the bloody history of the land…some of the things I found intriguing in WWE became commonplace in Pillars.

Pillars had one strong underlying theme – the building of the biggest tallest cathedral in England. No matter how speedily things changed in the story, how unexpectedly the fortunes of different characters turned, how hopeless the scene seemed, the reader always knows that things would work out and the Cathedral would be built in all its glory. So the horror one felt at a sad turn of the story was only momentary and the hope of all things being right again was just around the corner. In Contrast, WWE did not have any strong underlying theme and thus the turns in the story really did keep the reader guessing where the narrative will lead to.

Comparisons aside, I enjoyed reading Pillars. I also downloaded & watched the special 8 parts series that was made based on the book. Though a lot of the story line was changed, it was interesting to see the building of the Cathedral come to life in HD.