Sigh. Fair warning: I didn't finish the book. I know, I know - three stars for a DNF? DNF at all?

I liked the book - as much as I read of it. It's a Ken Follett novel so you know it is going to be a good story. The thing is, this is the third book in the series and he's using the same formula as for the first two: multiple obstacles thrown in the hero's path, strong women who (are so much more modern than the times permitted, almost uncomfortably so), rape and torture to get us to hate the villain...a thousand pages of brutal struggle for the payoff at the end. I just wasn't feeling it this time, even though we are finally at "my" era (the Tudors!). I got to the point in the book where the heroine decided that she would marry the villain because it was important to obey her parents and I closed the book. I didn't feel that he had set this up well enough to be a real motivation and I knew this would irk me more and more as the book progressed. I intend to come back to it when my TBR pile recedes from its terrifying tower - but right now I don't have the patience. ( )

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