Ken Follett, A Column of Fire

[Roger Pellett]

I just finished reading A Column of Fire, Ken Follett’s Novel about the reign of Queen Elizabeth (the first one).  It’s the January selection of our mens’ book Group.

 

Follett is a skilled writer and does a good job of explaining English History through the eyes of several protagonists but in this case the novel was spoiled by his apparent complete misunderstanding of Elizabethan maritime technology.  This is important as one of the protagonists is a ship captain and as the defeat of the Spanish Armada should be a climax of the story.

 

Examples:  The sea captain character’s ship is over 100ft long with a beam one fifth of its length; a galley maybe?  It has three masts; square rigged on the first and third and lateen rigged on the second!

 

In their voyage up the Channel, both the Spanish and English vessels are constantly “dropping sail” to have conferences.  I guess that he never heard of stopping a square rigged ship by heaving to.  The Spanish are such expert sailors  that they can drop their sails in unison; whatever that means.

 

And last but not least before engaging the enemy it was necessary to first “untie the guns.”

 

At the end of this 910 page book he acknowledges the impressive list of experts that advised him on various topics.  Conspicuously absent was anyone with a maritime history connection.  I doubt that they are difficult to find in Great Britain.

 

Roger

[Cathead]

Honestly, though Follett can spin a good yarn, if you know much about the periods he's describing the books go rapidly off the rails. Don't read The Evening and the Morning (the new prequel to that series) if you know anything about the Anglo-Saxon/Viking period,  your eyes will roll out of your head.

 

There are far more accurate historical writers out there who can still spin a yarn (such as Bernard Cornwell).

[Chuck Seiler]

26 minutes ago, Cathead said:

Don't read The Evening and the Morning (the new prequel to that series) if you know anything about the Anglo-Saxon/Viking period,  your eyes will roll out of your head.

For sale:  One recently purchased/unread book.  😢

[Justin P.]

44 minutes ago, Cathead said:

Don't read The Evening and the Morning (the new prequel to that series) if you know anything about the Anglo-Saxon/Viking period,  your eyes will roll out of your head.

Meh...   none of his books are really accurate perse, but they’re still pretty good.   After reading the other three, I felt obligated to read the new prequel, though after a few chapters it was clearly his least notable entry in the series.   I enjoyed it overall, but not nearly as much as Pillars or the other entries.

Edited December 2, 2020 by Justin P.

[Cathead]

Pillars is by far the best, an excellent book that stands up to repeated rereads (at least four for me). I'll never read the others again. As with many authors, he got it right once, then started cashing in on the formula with predictable results in terms of quality.

 

I mean, I've read them all, he obviously writes stories that draw readers in. But each successive book felt less compelling. E&M, for example, might work ok if you hadn't read any of the others, but by that point he's following some pretty deep narrative ruts and all the characters are recognizable as reflections of the same cutouts in previous books. And, most damning to me, E&M never once feels like it takes place in its intended era. It's just recycled Pillars with a few vague references to Vikings thrown in, along with a laughably silly "battle".

 

Any literary criticism is opinion-based, and we're all entitled to feel differently. Others' mileage may vary.

[Justin P.]

3 minutes ago, Cathead said:

E&M, for example, might work ok if you hadn't read any of the others, but by that point he's following some pretty deep narrative ruts and all the characters are recognizable as reflections of the same cutouts in previous books. And, most damning to me, E&M never once feels like it takes place in its intended era. It's just recycled Pillars with a few vague references to Vikings thrown in, along with a laughably silly "battle

This is the most articulate and concise  breakdown I’ve read.   I didn’t mean to come off contrarian and agree, I just think that unfortunately the most vocal critics tend to be his most ardent fans.   For the uninitiated, I would still advocate reading them, starting from E&M on through...   

[Roger Pellett]

I actually have a pretty good shelf of non-fiction books on English History.  Having finished this book a month before our January Zoom meeting I am fact checking.  So for he appears to be sticking to the known facts in describing historical events.  I felt, however, that he was particularly ignorant of Elizabethan Seamanship and just winged it instead of doing even the modest research needed for an authentic description.

 

Eric, I agree that sometimes he fails to put the reader into the era that he is writing about.  There is one scene where a character is visiting William Allen’s English College in France that prepares priests to be smuggled into England.  He meets an acolyte named Leonard who upon meeting him says “Call me Lenny.”  This might work in a crime novel set in the 1950’s but it doesn’t work here.

 

Our group read Pillars several years ago and I enjoyed it.

Edited December 2, 2020 by Roger Pellett

[Cathead]

I feel that he's generally good about the broad context but has gotten ever-sloppier with the details as the series goes on. For Pillars, my understanding is that he plunged into the details of period cathedral building and it comes through in the narrative. In the later books, he takes less time to understand what he's talking about and just writes the same story with the same characters with a few details changed to hint at a different era. But never once do you get the sense that he dove as deeply in the context of the others as he did for Pillars. Pillars is also the only one where there's really a deeper literary narrative behind the character arcs (the mystery of Jack Shareburg) that ties all the character arcs together in a creative and powerful way by the end.

 

I noticed the same things Roger did (laughable maritime scenes, "Lenny", various other strange and awkward stuff). Absolutely "winging it" in an effort to churn out the next best-selling potboiler rather than writing an actual work of literature (which Pillars aspires to and generally achieves). He does the same, even worse, in E&M.

 

If you all want a really interesting, highly detailed, fascinating, and compelling historical novel set deeply within English history, try An Instance of the Fingerpost. It tells the story of a mystery in 1600s Oxford, sequentially from four points of view, tying in a vast set of knowledge drawn from the religious, scientific, and political tumult of the period. Just about the best-crafted historical novel I've ever read and one that really needs to be read multiple times to fully appreciate how many threads he's weaving together.

[Roger Pellett]

Thanks Eric, I’ll add it to my reading list.