Title: Ho-hum History
Product review: Having never read a Ken Follett novel before (and I doubt very much there will be a second one I'll attempt), I picked up The Pillars of the Earth, even though the on-line reviews were highly mixed. It was l-o-n-g (primarily because of repetition that seemed to be based on the concept that no reader had a memory longer than four pages and had to be reminded continually of elements and individuals that had been made clear time after time), was rife with contrived, stilted dialogue, flat characters, and a perpetual deux-ex-machina approach to conflict. The focus on the brutality of some characters may have been historically accurate but the concentration in one or two characters seemed more gratuitous than necessary to any development of the point. The limits of credibility were stretched to the extreme throughout.
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