A Column of Fire (The Kingsbridge Novels)

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I’m not a history buff, so I cannot comment if any of the events were accurate, but I have never picked a fiction book with the intention of learning anything, so If you are looking for accuracy this may not be the right one, but if you are just looking for a form of entertainment, then you are in it for a fascinating trip. Alison McKay is depicted as afterwards strongly but vainly urging Mary not to take the decision to go to England - a fatal mistake which led to a much longer imprisonment which the loyal Alison shared up to the moment of Mary's execution. Catherine de' Medici - Queen Consort of France and Queen Regent during the reign of her son Charles, wife of Henri II, mother of Francis II, Charles IX, and Henri III, a tolerant Catholic. A devil-may-care, enterprising rogue, he lives for the thrill of adventure, the company of beautiful women, and the life of the sailor. The plot includes extensive depictions of several important historical events of the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Queen Mary Tudor is on the throne and has turned the country back to its Catholic foundation, which is causing some concerns amongst her subjects. The new Queen riles up everyone by seeking tolerance and acceptance of any form of Christianity in England, choosing not to side with either Protestants or Catholics wholeheartedly. He sailed upstream from Combe Harbour in the cabin of a slow barge loaded with cloth from Antwerp and wine from Bordeaux. New York Times bestselling author Ken Follett takes us deep into the treacherous world of powerful monarchs, intrigue, murder, and treason with his magnificent new epic, A Column of Fire.Reading this felt like I was reading about the battles that took place between England and France in late 1500. Unlike the two previous novels in this series, a large portion of the plot takes place outside the town of Kingsbridge, utilizing such far-flung settings as London, Paris, Seville, Geneva, Antwerp, Scotland and the Caribbean, and involving many major characters who have no direct connection with the town. Ned Willard - The younger son of a prosperous Kingsbridge merchant family, a tolerant Protestant who desires no man should die for his faith.

But, since we didn't see a lot of Barney and Rollo, their two story-lines felt almost arbitrary and random. Religious tension is fueling a conflagration of hatred and Follett uses this to really branch out far beyond Kingsbridge and add aspects of a spy thriller to the narrative. Follett brings to life the opposing passions of Catholics and Protestants, again interweaving his fictional characters with real life people such as Elizabeth, the Guises, and so on.

Follett's account attributes to the book's main villain, Pierre Aumande - an intelligent, capable, and utterly ruthless man - the main responsibility for planning and initiating the massacre. This book brings to a conclusion a story that began with the building of a cathedral in a tumultuous period of the Middle Ages and ends in the grounds of that same cathedral in the calm period that followed the infamous "Gun-powder plot" of the very early 17th. The difference between Protestant and Catholic sects is made as clear as it’s possible for a modern book to make it, although to me it leaves a mystery as to what the tie-in between Calvin, Erasmus, and Henry VIII might be.