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A review by mrbear
A Column of Fire by Ken Follett
4.0
This took me a fairly long time time to listen to, not just because it was an audiobook, but because it was less fundamentally compelling than the previous books. I found the characters less relatable across the board than both the previous books, with the “main character” Ned falling relatively far behind the variety or main characters in the other books both in terms of relatability and personality.
That said, if you’ve read the last 2, of course I still recommend this book. It did an excellent job of teaching me about a variety of historical events that I knew about separately, but not together or in order, and about the combative rise of Protestantism and the subsequent religious wars in northern Europe. Specifically, the book ties together the Spanish colonization of the islands in the Americas, the rise of protestantism in England, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, the edict of Nantes, the life and death of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Anglo-Spanish war, including the British attack on Cadiz and the defeat of the Spanish army in the English channel, the gunpowder plot, and the way in which all of these events culminated in the rise of Puritanism and the search for religious freedom in the new world. Quite frankly, its hard to imagine another novel contextualizing so much history without being a textbook.
My favorite aspects, however, were the clever, more nuanced points. Ned’s relatives leaving Spain for the Netherlands in search of a land more open to innovation, the life of a sailor as an escape from the various conflicts of European powers (and yet still closely related to it, through the wars), the slow transition of old priory grounds into modern marketplaces. These details provided incredible historical context and perspective, and made me fervently wish that historians regularly worked to write novels of this form to more easily pass on what we know about the past to the average person (with footnotes about what we know for sure and what we dont, to make it academic!).
Overall, a great series for closet historians like myself, and I can only hope Follett’s other series on the 20th century is as informative.
That said, if you’ve read the last 2, of course I still recommend this book. It did an excellent job of teaching me about a variety of historical events that I knew about separately, but not together or in order, and about the combative rise of Protestantism and the subsequent religious wars in northern Europe. Specifically, the book ties together the Spanish colonization of the islands in the Americas, the rise of protestantism in England, the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, the edict of Nantes, the life and death of Mary, Queen of Scots, the Anglo-Spanish war, including the British attack on Cadiz and the defeat of the Spanish army in the English channel, the gunpowder plot, and the way in which all of these events culminated in the rise of Puritanism and the search for religious freedom in the new world. Quite frankly, its hard to imagine another novel contextualizing so much history without being a textbook.
My favorite aspects, however, were the clever, more nuanced points. Ned’s relatives leaving Spain for the Netherlands in search of a land more open to innovation, the life of a sailor as an escape from the various conflicts of European powers (and yet still closely related to it, through the wars), the slow transition of old priory grounds into modern marketplaces. These details provided incredible historical context and perspective, and made me fervently wish that historians regularly worked to write novels of this form to more easily pass on what we know about the past to the average person (with footnotes about what we know for sure and what we dont, to make it academic!).
Overall, a great series for closet historians like myself, and I can only hope Follett’s other series on the 20th century is as informative.