[Suzerain of Sheol]

Originally Posted by Gallowsraven

Go on, rant, someone's bound to rant about Twilight sooner or later ;)

So be it.

To begin with, in case anyone's not aware, this book is considered to be great, as far as I can gather, an epic, both in scope and length. And that's the first problem right there.

I'm only 80 pages into it, but the story so far could have been written in 10. Literally, not even 15 minutes of the first episode of the t.v. series has been covered. Follett goes into endless, excruciating detail about the most banal minutiae he seemingly contrive to write about. And he often isn't content to do so once, but will repeat the same useless information over and over throughout a character's point of view.

Tying into this, he constantly uses parentheses in an obvious, after-the-fact explanatory way that is completely, completely unnecessary. Not once, in 80 pages and dozens of such parenthetical afterthoughts has the information conveyed been anything but blindingly apparent from the preceding narrative. This is outright insulting for an author to do.

Now, onto the the characters and characterization. I'll admit to having a bias from watching the t.v. series, but apparently Tom Builder is mentally-challenged, repressed rapist in the making, and I never knew it. I'm sorry, but lines like "Tom had always found the thought of taking a woman against her will secretly erotic" are worthy of nothing but eye-rolling. I realize this is the "oh-so-Dark Ages", (actually, the high Middle Ages...) but come on, is this man an animal? This is seriously what he's thinking about while his daughter is unconscious and bleeding and miss pagan sex-goddess witch is tending her?

On the other hand, we have Prior Phillip of Kingsbridge, whose characterization is more of a technical flaw. In chapter 2 (which is somehow after chapter 5... this book is weird. I'm assuming sub-chapters) he is introduced for precisely one page in the present. Then we unceremoniously flash back and get 25 pages of exposition following his entire life's story from childhood until now, filled with utterly irrelevant details, particularly those of his difficulty coping with monastic vows of personal purity. Once again, I do NOT need to know the details of this man's private sexual desires. Subtlety, dammit! These things can be conveyed in narrative and dialogue without wasting pages and pages pulling the story to a screeching halt so we can read about how a monk pleasures himself. If that's actually important to his character (*rolls eyes*) there are better ways of including it.

All in all, this book is just a bloated mess. The writing is full of anachronisms and facile similes that couldn't possibly be more cliched. Follett, an amazingly successful author, has seemingly never learned the absolute, crowning attribute of good writing: show, and do not tell, except where it cannot be avoided and even then... subtlety! Creativity! Thoughtfulness! I despair, truly, of ever getting anything published, if this is what publishers are looking for.

The Starz series seems to have shared my opinion, because the show bears almost no resemblance to the book, and the show is better off for it. Instead of this obese wreckage of a plot, it actually does a passable job at portraying a compelling drama with somewhat deep characters (except the laughably-one-dimensional villain, who none the less is pleasure to watch).

My verdict: skip the book, watch the show. It's possible that it gets better (and I mean to read the rest of it, just taking a break to finish Storm of Swords) but I don't see how these flaws could go away.

*takes deep breath* *exhales* I warned you it would be long-winded and ranting. :p