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.