The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett
National Bookstore-Ayala Mall
P335
The joy of reading this book is in being with the characters in every twist and turn of their tangled fates. Every single page is enthralling. Every twenty pages or so has a climax. Follett describes action in a clear and taut language that you feel caught in the middle of it and whatever peril there is on the character's life is also a peril on yours.
There is really no need for this story to have a major finale. So it is sad that Follett packs the final part with resolutions. The conventional manner of ending a novel doesn't work so well with Pillars because its plot is not built up like a conventional novel's. It is more like a soap opera composed of breathtaking, semi-independent episodes.
Reading a conventional novel is like treading a gigantic inclined plane; you rise higher and higher until you reach the end of the plane--the climax. But that's not the end of the journey yet. In the trip to the last page, you take a steady slide on a steep slope. Reading Pillars, meanwhile, is like having a trip over a long straight queue of hills. (It's 900-plus pages.) The construction of the cathedral, where the story revolves,should naturally come to an end; but the struggles of the characters should not.
