An enjoyable read, but not as gripping as it's predecessor, "Pillars of the Earth." Deja vu....big time. Too often it felt as though what I was reading was directly lifted from the pages of the first book. And the narrative....for all it's intruige.....was just not as engaging. Perhaps the biggest flaw is that the stakes were not as high. In the original, Kingsbridge was square in the middle of the civil war between King Stephen and his would be challenger, the Empress Maud. By the fourteenth century, however, the main conflicts have moved further abroad and the attempts to tie Kingsbridge to international politics are tenuous at best. Never the less, it is hard not to become involved with the characters. I've always found that strongly drawn characters are a strength of Follett's writing, whether you love them or hate them. I was rooting for Merthin and Caris, even though their romance wasn't quite so heart tugging as Jack and Aliena's in the first book, and happily holding out for the likes of Prior Godwyn and Ralph Fitzgerald to meet their unhappy ends, even though they weren't a patch on Waleran Bigod and William Hamleigh, the truly loathsome villians from the first book. Indeed, I felt that it was only in the third act that the narrative really kicks into gear, when the plague ravages the village. This is the one scenario that sets it apart from "Pillars." Everything else - from power clashes over property to the minutae of middle age building processes - is depressingly familar. This isn't to say I didn't enjoy it - I did. I'm a huge fan of Ken Follett - as well as "Pillars" I've also read a lot of his more modern stories. I love his writing style, his eye for detail, and his ability to create wholly realised, flawed characters - easy for the reader to relate to. I never expected "World Without End" to be as good as the first book - which will always stand alone for me as the first "adult" novel I ever read, plucked off my parent's shelf when I was about twelve years old. I give this four stars.