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<\/p>\n\n\n\nby Ken Follett, 2025, Audiobook narrated by Ralph Armitage, Grand Central Publishing <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the worst book I have read or listened to in quite a while. Follett attempts to apply his well-worn formula to a topic and era that has limited historical records. The story is basically about the construction of Stonehenge and there is little proof of how they actually did it. So, Follett speculates on the construction, the cultures and living conditions, and then fills in with his worn-out characters and their personal interactions (including some sex to attempt to generate more interest). The characters consist of (as they do in his other books) a really brilliant person who comes up with solutions to all of the engineering problems, another character who is a really good person, a bunch of additional good characters and some really bad actors. All of the characters are one-dimensional (good versus bad) and we have probably seen all of them in Follett’s other books.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My wife mentioned a few days ago how much she enjoyed Follett’s early thrillers like Eye of the Needle<\/em> that he wrote before he started writing these pseudo historical novels. I remember reading it years ago and that I was sitting on the edge of my chair reading the first couple chapters. This more recent stuff has now worn itself out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I see that on Amazon, 44% of the over 24,000 reviews are a 5.0. I think this might tell us about the reading public. I gave it a one-star rating because my ratings don’t go below one star. This book is a zero or even a minus in my opinion. Maybe the narrator, Ralph Amitage, has earned the one-star rating by managing to stay away until the end. What kept me awake was my frustration that I was actually listening to such trash.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Ken Follett, 2025, Audiobook narrated by Ralph Armitage, Grand Central Publishing This is the worst book I have read or listened to in quite a while. Follett attempts to apply his well-worn formula to a topic and era that …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/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-4228","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\/4228","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=4228"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4229,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4228\/revisions\/4229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilsonld.com\/weblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}