Title: Great characters but you might want to avoid this book if...
Product review: ...You might want to avoid this book if you have been a victim of sexual violence. This book kept me reading through its many, many pages because of some really good characterization -- if I hadn't liked several of the characters so much, and found them so thoroughly human and real, I would not have waded through the long and rather tedious descriptions of the thought processes of designing a cathedral. While I understand that this was a violent time period, the graphic rape scenes were unnecessary and gratuitous. One can convey a sense of horror without putting the reader through that. I always wonder at a male author who finds this sort of description necessary - did he get a thrill from imagining the detail, or did he hope that his audience would? Yuck!
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