The Pillars of the Earth

Just not a good book. While some of the underlying ideas are cool, the book is very shallow. The characters are extremely one-dimensional (the main villain rapes or murders someone in most chapters he is involved in, often in sections that are entirely incidental to the main story and feel like they were just included to make sure you wouldn't forget who the bad guys are) and behave unnaturally. It takes one of the main characters about ten minutes to recover from his beloved wife dying from childbirth in his arms, immediatly falling in love with a woman he saw once before and who pretty much rapes him on the spot. The story also doesn't feel medieval. It feels like most characters are from the 20th century larping "dark ages" England. Finally, way to much of the book is just porn. I really did not wish to know how much the author likes large boobs, but now I do.