★★★★ (of 5)

• Full Title: The Evening And The Morning
• Author: Ken Follett
• Pages: 913
• Year: 2020
• Genre: Historical Fiction
• Publisher: Viking (Penguin Random House)
• ISBN 978-0-525-95498-9 (first edition hardcover)
• Author’s Wikipedia page

 

Intro

I recently read Follett’s The Pillars Of The Earth and had decided to read its two sequels but then heard he’d just released a fourth book in the Kingsbridge series, a prequel. A few days later, I found the newly published hardcover The Evening And The Morning on sale for a reduced price in a local store and bought it. I reasoned that I usually prefer reading a series in chronological order, so I might as well get this prequel out of the way before tackling the sequels.

Set in the late 900s CE, this book covers ten years in the lives of its major characters, starting with Edgar the Builder in the coastal town of Combe (fictional, I believe) in southern England, moving through Dreng’s Ferry, Shiring, and other locales. Dreng’s Ferry is the run-down place that eventually gets built up over the course of this novel and is renamed King’s Bridge — the fictional Kingsbridge of the novels that follow. Most of the story is told from the perspective of Edgar the Builder, a monk named Aldred, and a French noblewoman called Ragna, though other characters get perspective sections too — an evil bishop, for one.

 

Praise

As much as I liked The Pillars Of The Earth, I think this prequel was a better book, getting comfortably close to five stars.

Again, despite its length, it reads quickly, and again the depictions of English life of the time period felt accurate. Every time I looked up something, Follett got it right. Though most characters are fictional (King Ethelred was historical), the book is set during the real-life period when Vikings raided England regularly. Each fictional town and person had a well-developed backstory and believable motivations.

Most of all, the story feels like it’s about real people in real places who just happened to live a thousand years ago.

I also thought Follett did an amazing job of portraying the beliefs of the various Christian characters, given that he himself is an atheist. It’s always impressive to me when an author can accurately describe the fervent beliefs of others, beliefs not held by the author.

Improvements over Pillars include: more twists and turns to the story, more dastardly plots, and more true love. Further, though this also includes rape scenes, I think they are more delicately handled here, and aren’t described at length. And here, the shifting narrator perspectives are handled better; it’s always obvious whose viewpoint we’re looking through.

 

Points Off For...

The only thing keeping me from rating this five stars is the culmination of a few minor errors and some naming choices.

Two storytelling mistakes stood out to me as I read. (1) On page 236, Ragna sends her maid Cat and her bodyguard Bern ahead of her, but as the scene continues, Ragna talks to Bern as if he is still next to her, and he obeys. It looks like the author meant to edit out Bern from the “sent ahead” part, because he needed Bern to stay with Ragna, yet simply forgot that edit and no one noticed. (2) On page 807, Ragna “told Cat to watch the boys, and left with Hildi” to go see something, but two sentences later, “Cat led the way” to show Ragna to a small house. Clearly, this too is the result of a rewrite that never got cleaned up.

Ragna’s hair is originally described as “wonderful red hair” (page 86), but sixty pages later, her hair is “such bright gold”. Then on page 250, it’s red again. Finally, by page 296, the author decides it’s both red and gold, and then it continues to be “red-gold” from then on (except one scene during her captivity when it’s a dirty “brown” color).

Naming choices: I had a bit of a hard time keeping up with the many characters whose names began with “Wi” or “Wy”, which probably has nothing to do with my own given name. Some of them include: Wynswith, Wynstan, Wilfurd, Wigelm, Wigferth, and Wilburgh.

As I said, none of these are deal-breakers; it was the culmination of them over 900+ pages that kept me from giving the book five stars.

 

Conclusion

The book was enjoyable in many ways, and was an excellent diversion from my normal fare. Now, even more so, I want to read the two sequels, (World Without End and A Column Of Fire), and on the day I finished this book, I found one of the sequels at the local library.

Historical fiction certainly isn’t my primary genre, but Follett is nailing these.

 

 

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