Beautifully narrated, as always, by John Lee, here is yet another excellent Kingsbridge centered historical fiction novel by Mr. Follett. The line of heritage lengthens, and previous structures and characters provide the foundation for our newest admirable hero, Ned Willard, coming of age at the end of Queen Mary’s reign, when citizens of England watch the wheel of fortune turn again as the religion that holds power, becomes the religion that loses power, while France, Spain, and the Pope vie for position in a kaleidoscope of intrigue and deception. ( )

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. ( )

A Column of Fire is a historical novel. It is a very long story about the fight of England allowing religious freedom that is, Protestants being allowed to worship. There were many bloody conflicts by the Catholics to keep the Protestants out of England wherein they got Spain to bring in her ships to kill all Protestants. There is much English history to be learned in this book. Four stars were given in this review. ( )

Historical Fiction

I think Follett forgot he made Kingsbridge the home of his Kingsbridge books. Either that, or this was a merge with another historical fiction book he really wanted to write. We spend as much time dealing with France as we do England, and the drama of protestant revolution, Mary & Liz, all tenuously tied to Kingsbridge but not by much. There's also a formula he uses with primary and secondary romance plots, moustache twirling villains, but it seemed more rote here than in previous entries.

When you write a book that's 2-3 times as long as the average book, that also demands the result be a cut above the rest to justify the investment. This is very skippable in an otherwise great series. ( )