{"id":32262,"date":"2018-01-12T06:00:34","date_gmt":"2018-01-12T12:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs2.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/?p=32262"},"modified":"2018-01-09T18:12:24","modified_gmt":"2018-01-10T00:12:24","slug":"a-column-of-fire-by-ken-follett","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/a-column-of-fire-by-ken-follett\/","title":{"rendered":"A Column of Fire by Ken Follett"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>guest post by Laura<\/p>\n

Ken Follett\u2019s Kingsbridge series readers have patience. He released the Pillars of the Earth<\/em><\/a> in 1989, World Without End<\/em><\/a> in 2010, and A Column of Fire<\/strong><\/em><\/a> in 2017. They\u2019re not sequels in the traditional manner. They take place in the same location hundreds of years apart and have some loosely, genealogically connected characters.<\/p>\n

I was excited to see A Column of Fire<\/strong><\/em><\/a> came out in the fall of 2017. There\u2019s quite a long waiting list to read it, so you may have time to catch up on the previous two if you\u2019re a fan of historical fiction after you\u2019ve gotten on the list. Just as in the previous two novels, this is a sweeping tale of romance with plenty of intrigue and this one even includes a few pirates. In contrast to the other books, A Column of Fire<\/strong><\/em><\/a> expands into international politics and crosses borders, reflecting the importance of interstate commerce and increased modes and routes of global travel.<\/p>\n

It was fun to discover who the real historical figures and who the fictional characters were at the end, although one could guess. If you\u2019re well-versed in European history during the 1500s, you will be spoiled. I had only a general knowledge so I was in suspense much of the time. Like his other novels, he includes the major historical occurrences of the time, focusing on the religious turmoil between Catholics and Protestants.<\/p>\n

I grew somewhat tired of the predictability of the fates of some of his fictional characters. There is definitely a pattern in his writing. Real life isn\u2019t so just and predictable and I felt cheated that he thought I wouldn\u2019t be satisfied with a divergence from his typical ending. I\u2019m guessing most of his loyal fans may not agree with me on that, however. Overall, I enjoyed the book and am happy I was able to read all three over the span of a couple of decades.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

guest post by Laura Ken Follett\u2019s Kingsbridge series readers have patience. He released the Pillars of the Earth in 1989, World Without End in 2010, and A Column of Fire in 2017. They\u2019re not sequels in the traditional manner. They take place in the same location hundreds of years apart[Read more]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[10],"tags":[80,616,4459],"class_list":["post-32262","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-england","tag-historical-fiction","tag-religious-turmoil"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd0CXx-8om","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32262","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32262"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32262\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32268,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32262\/revisions\/32268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32262"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32262"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.davenportlibrary.com\/reference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32262"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}