{"id":2570,"date":"2020-05-14T19:53:46","date_gmt":"2020-05-15T01:53:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=2570"},"modified":"2020-05-14T19:53:48","modified_gmt":"2020-05-15T01:53:48","slug":"a-column-of-fire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=2570","title":{"rendered":"A Column of Fire"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Ken Follett, 2017, Audiobook narrated by John Lee, Penguin Audio<\/p>\n<p>This is an addition to Follett&#8217;s other historical novels, this one related primarily to the reign of Elizabeth I in England.\u00c2\u00a0 The characters are typical of Follett&#8217;s writing.\u00c2\u00a0 The primary hero is an individual named Ned Willard who, although he comes from a fairly small town in England, rises to become knighted and one of Elizabeth&#8217;s trusted advisors.<\/p>\n<p>The story provides a rich backdrop of history and moves along pretty well.\u00c2\u00a0 The characters, as in Follett&#8217;s other historical novels, however, are somewhat unbelievable.\u00c2\u00a0 They are, for the most part, either diabolically evil or good and heroic as in the case of Ned Willard.\u00c2\u00a0 The world is a constant battle between good and evil.<\/p>\n<p>Follett also provides a stark picture of the intolerance evidenced by religions in that era, be they Catholic or Protestant.\u00c2\u00a0 The world veered from the intolerance of one religion to the other, depending on which held the most power at any given time.\u00c2\u00a0 Follett paints a picture that is very dark when it comes to organized religion.<\/p>\n<p>I had the good fortune to listen to the book while I either walked or worked on a manual project.\u00c2\u00a0 In this way I made good use of my time and didn&#8217;t get bogged down on reading this very long novel. <img decoding=\"async\" title=\"3.5 stars\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wilsonld.com\/weblog\/wp-includes\/images\/stars-3-5.gif\" alt=\"3.5 stars\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Ken Follett, 2017, Audiobook narrated by John Lee, Penguin Audio This is an addition to Follett&#8217;s other historical novels, this one related primarily to the reign of Elizabeth I in England.\u00c2\u00a0 The characters are typical of Follett&#8217;s writing.\u00c2\u00a0 The <span class=\"excerpt-dots\">&hellip;<\/span> <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/?p=2570\"><span class=\"more-msg\">Continue reading &rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[15,19],"class_list":["post-2570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-fiction","tag-historical-novel"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2570"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2571,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2570\/revisions\/2571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}