The Pillars of the Earth | 
 enlarge | Author: Ken Follett
Creator: George Ralph
Publisher: Brilliance Audio Unabridged
Category: Book
Buy New: $140.00
New (1) Used (7) from $52.43
Rating:  1194 reviews
Sales Rank: 377508
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio Cassette
Edition: Unabridged
Number Of Items: 20
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.7
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 6.4 x 3.4
ISBN: 1590862910
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9781590862919
ASIN: 1590862910
Publication Date: September 28, 2002
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: NEW. Unabridged, 20 Audio Cassettes. In factory seals. Quick shipping
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Product Description
The Pillars of the Earth sweeps through four decades of 12th Century England drawing the listener into the raw, flamboyant middle ages. It is a shining saga of good and evil, treachery and intrigue, violence and beauty. Not-so-noble knights, righteous heroes, valiant heroines and both virtuous and immoral men of God highlight this story. They manipulate, and are in turn manipulated by, the political turmoil and unrest between the reigns of Henry I and Henry II.
The listener will cheer on the fates of the virtuous and hiss at the evil-doers. A truly fascinating story that the listener will never forget.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1189 more reviews...
 Great characters but you might want to avoid this book if... July 7, 2008
pjenning (Bellvue, CO USA)
...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!
 Phenomenal book. July 7, 2008
Char (Manhattan Beach, So Cal)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Phenomenal book. My husband and I read this book and World Without End, respectively, then switched. We loved both!
The pillars of the earth July 6, 2008
Leah Andritz (Florida)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
This is a good book, especially if you enjoy historical fiction and have an interest in Art history and it's architecture.
 There's a good story buried in here... July 5, 2008
nodice (Manchester, Ga United States)
it's just too bad that Follett felt the need to pad it with an extra 400 unneccessary pages. Despite the uninspired proses, high school-ish dialogue and a few sinks thrown at the reader, the book has just enough to make you continue to find out what the heck happened. But I have to tell you, by page 700 I was sick of this cathedral. I do like that the women weren't always helpless damsels, despite a few horrible things happening to them, but did all the men have to be complete jerks? Other than Phillip I didn't care for any of them and Phillip rode my last nerve, too. I know as writers, there is a creative license that everyone is entitled to; but really, this reads like the author just didn't know any better on some of the historical facts. Richard and Aliena would not have been just left to hold the earldom after a raid-especially when their father was arrested for treason. Plus Richard would have already been someone squire at that age. The thing that really annoy me about Tom the Builder was just how fast he got over his first wife, Agnes. Literally the next evening he was in love with someone else and he didn't spare her a REAL second thought. 400 pages later Follett throws in that he was just getting over her, but it rang so false that it was insulting. Plus, in the begining of this book we see this family roaming around, starving and barely covering a country side and then 500 pages later, see Aliena cover vast amount of land looking for Jack with supposedly no money, too and with a baby and she wasn't starving and withering away. (Sure she got sick briefly, but C'mon.) There's a very comic book feels to a lot of this that I wished Follett just made it a fantasy so the author could do what he wanted and not have me frowning at the book and going "that's not what happened." Walrean was a disappointing nemesis, I didn't understand how the Hamleigh forgave him for trying to steal an earldom and hate a guy for just wanting some timber and rocks from them. I wanted specfics of Walreans downfall-not that he just shows up and wants to be lowly monk again. William was extremely over the top and I fail to see how a ragamuffin army of Richard's (supposedly of a hundred people) couldn't kill 4 ex-knights taken unawares during a rape.) I loved Follett's Eye of the Needle, but I think he really needs to stay out of the middle ages.
A very long bodice ripper . . . July 5, 2008
Lynne (Massachusetts)
This book reminded me of the bodice rippers that I read when I was a teenager - you know, the ones with Fabio on the cover? It was much longer, of course, more like 3 bodice rippers in one novel. There's the sexy heroine (Aliena), the likeable tradesman (Tom), the evil lord (William), and the saintly monk (Phillip). The story is good vs. evil, true love conquers all, blah, blah.
I finished this book, and found it readable, and even compelling in some parts. The violence bothered me, and I got weary of all the challenges, one after the other after the other, that the characters had to go through. The descriptions could be tedious. When Jack sets fire to the church, it takes pages and pages - it should have been done in one page.
I have to disagree with some of the reviewers who thought that the cathedral building information was well done. I found it confusing and hard to visualize. Even though I have visited cathedrals all over the world (Westminster, York, Notre Dame), I still don't know what a Nave is, so when you tell me that it crosses the chancery (don't know what that is either) or some such - it doesn't do me a bit of good. I would have found it helpful if 10 or so pages of the 970 were devoted to a glossary or even some drawings. I had to go online to look up St. Denis just to get an idea of what the mythical Kingsbridge Cathedral would look like.
I would not call this historical fiction - it was more like fiction set in a past time. Unlike most historical fiction, the places and people described in this book did not exist. It puts into question how much of it is historically accurate.
In summary, I would say that you could read this book and be entertained, but if you skipped it, you wouldn't be missing anything. You could read A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught or The Love Knot by Elizabth Chadwick, and you'd get the same idea.
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