THE EVENING AND THE MORNING

by Ken Follett

816 pages

English language

Published Nov. 5, 2020 by MACMILLAN.

ISBN:: 978-1-4472-7878-8

(83 reviews)

It is 997 CE, the end of the Dark Ages. England is facing attacks from the Welsh in the west and the Vikings in the east. Those in power bend justice according to their will, regardless of ordinary people and often in conflict with the king. Without a clear rule of law, chaos reigns.

In these turbulent times, three characters find their lives intertwined. A young boatbuilder's life is turned upside down when the only home he's ever known is raided by Vikings, forcing him and his family to move and start their lives anew in a small hamlet where he does not fit in. . . . A Norman noblewoman marries for love, following her husband across the sea to a new land, but the customs of her husband's homeland are shockingly different, and as she begins to realize that everyone around her is engaged in a constant, brutal battle for power, it becomes clear that a single misstep could be catastrophic. . . . A monk dreams of transforming his humble abbey into a center of learning that will be admired throughout Europe. And each in turn comes into dangerous conflict with a clever and ruthless bishop who will do anything to increase his wealth and power.

9 editions

altlovesbooks reviewed Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

"The first casualty of a civil war was justice."

Well, I finally did it. I finally knocked this one off my to-read list at the expense of my yearly goal (I’m two books behind now!), and I feel good about finally working my way through it. This is a weird book for me to rate, because I’m not very religious and I can’t exactly say I enjoyed it all the way through, but I’m still putting book two on my to-read list for….sometime in the future. Maybe next year.

This is a book about a man with a dream to build a church. Things start small, then quickly snowball as these things do, creating a real mess of church problems and state problems along the way. The lines between the two were, basically, nonexistent back then. Lots of political infighting, jockeying for position within the church/country, stuff like that. Amongst it all we get to know a few members of the village/town/city of Kingsbridge, and follow them as they experience the repercussions of these choices down at the personal level.

I definitely enjoyed some of the points of view more than others. Ailena was far and away my least favorite perspective in the beginning, had some redemption in the middle, and then returned to being my least favorite in the end. Philip, the prior of Kingsbridge, ended up being my favorite point of view, as we see his dreams of a new church building come to fruition. His internal struggles the entire way were interesting to read about, particularly when he struggles constantly with personal pride as a member of the church. I enjoyed the writing, the story was pretty great, I just felt like it dragged a bit in places. I guess in a book of almost 1000 pages it’s to be expected, though.

I don’t know, I’m glad to have finished it and have added the sequel to my to-read list, but I’m not sure who I’d recommend it to. It comes with some religious baggage, so if that’s not your jam, I’d probably pass on it unless you can set your personal feelings aside to experience a good, realistic, medieval story.

wdhertog reviewed THE EVENING AND THE MORNING by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Nu op naar de originele serie

hwebb reviewed Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

If you like the rest of the series, you'll probably like this one, too. It's the same formula with the same pitfalls; character development is sacrificed somewhat for plot, and the latter part of the book seems to be "let's make the worst things possible happen to the protagonists without actually killing them." But the story is entertaining, and the depictions of life in the period are (hopefully) historically accurate.

Ellemir reviewed Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Abgebrochen, weil ich einfach in das Buch nicht hineinkam. Ich hatte das Gefühl, nur wieder die Säulen der Erde zu lesen, vor anderem Hintergrund zu einer anderen Zeit. Vielleicht sind Ken Folletts Bücher und mein Lesegeschmack inzwischen einfach nicht mehr kompatibel.

Nachtfalke reviewed Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Uneven, and a little bit too formulaic in its approach - but a better addition to the series than a column of fire. Should Follett decide to write another prequel, I would read it.

ManyRoads reviewed Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

Not my style. Not even a little bit.

greeny reviewed Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

1 star

I read this book when I was about 16-17.
It gave me nothing. Didn't like the plot nor the characters. The story is repeating itself over and over again and the middle-age is full of shitty things, like religion and no rights for women and all the shitty religion once again. I can see me reading a book about this time for 100-200 pages. But Ken Follet decided to take the content for 200 pages and rolles it out to 1000. I don't understand why people like this book in particular. I never read another book by this author.

Aidan Reads reviewed Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

No rating

Put it down. Told to re-read it.

Matt K reviewed The Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'The Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

I was surprised at how fast I plowed through this book. So much drama and intrigue and history, I kept sneaking in chances to read wherever I could.

In a way, this felt like science fiction - the society and the culture was so strange and different from anything I understand that I could have read this for the world alone.

Well worth the 1000 pages of your time.

NetCaptive reviewed Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Epic.

Sunnie reviewed Evening and the Morning by Ken Follett

Review of 'Evening and the Morning' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

I wanted to like this book a great deal more than I actually did. I picked it up last week after it was enthusiastically recommended to me by several co-workers, but I expected a lot more of it after hearing people gush over how wonderful it was.

It wasn't a terrible book by any means, but I found the characters to be shallow and underdeveloped, and (with a few exceptions) they were nearly indistinguishable from each other under the surface details. The prose was formulaic -- I noticed several specific phrases being reused throughout the book -- and anachronistic enough to be distracting. Perhaps it's just me, but if I'm reading a book set in the twelfth century, I would prefer a little more attention paid to structuring the language so that it feels more present in that timeperiod. The book felt very modern to me because of the way it was written, and despite my interest in the era in which it was set and the discussions of cathedrals, which are a particular interest of mine, I couldn't really immerse myself in Follett's created world. (I could have done with fewer rape scenes, as well, but that's a personal preference.)

I'll probably borrow my co-worker's copy of the sequel to read in a few months, when I've run out of other things, but I won't rush out and buy it immediately.