I should probably preface this by saying that I made the mistake of first watching the first half of the tv mini series for this book, and then reading the whole book. I therefore spent the entire first half of the book comparing each and every difference between the two - and there are a LOT. For anyone expecting a true to book adaptation from the mini series, don't. If you just changed the names of the characters in the series, it would be a different story. Anyway, having done that, I think it may have detracted from my enjoyment of the book. However, even when I got to the second half of the book (and I could stop my comparisons), I had to force myself to pick it up each time, mostly just for the sake of finishing. I don't think I was as sympathetic to the characters as I was in Pillars (which I gave 4 stars to). Pillars seemed to have more focus than this one as everything in Pillars revolved around the building of the cathedral, whereas in WWE there was the building of a bridge, then a hospital, then a new church spire. It jumped from one to the next to the next.
I would say the story itself was probably two stars for me, but there is no denying that Ken Follett is an excellent writer and there is so much historical research that clearly went into this that it feels wrong to give this less than 3 stars.
