Evening and Morning

Evening and Morning Review

Evening and Morning is the fourth Kingsbridge novel and the most ambitious structural choice Ken Follett has made in the series — a prequel set in the Dark Ages, nearly four centuries before the events of The Pillars of the Earth, showing how the town of Kingsbridge came to exist. Where the earlier novels were set in medieval England at moments of relative institutional development — the 12th century, the 14th century, the 16th century — this one is set in 997 AD, when England was still under regular Viking assault and the Norman Conquest was still sixty-nine years away.

The prequel strategy pays off in ways that enrich the series retrospectively. The cathedral that stands at the center of The Pillars of the Earth had to begin somewhere, and Follett traces the chain of decisions — about where a town might grow, where a monastery might be established, what physical features would make a location defensible and commercially viable — that explains why Kingsbridge is where it is. For readers of the earlier novels, the pleasure is partly archaeological: recognizing the foundations beneath what they already know.

The three central characters follow the series template: Edgar is a builder’s son with exceptional talent who wants to construct things; Ragna is a Norman noblewoman who marries an English alderman and must navigate a court that resists her; Aldred is a monk with scholarly ambitions and a sincere faith. Arrayed against them is the usual Follett villain — in this case Wynstan, a corrupt bishop — whose malice provides the plot’s engine.

The Dark Ages setting is darker in the literal sense: there are fewer institutions, less legal recourse, and more direct violence than in the later medieval novels. Follett renders this with historical care while maintaining the accessibility that makes his epic fiction readable to audiences who would not otherwise approach medieval history.

Building the World Before the World

Evening and Morning, published in 2020, is the fourth Kingsbridge book and the boldest structural move Follett has made in the series — a prequel set in 997 AD, in the Dark Ages, nearly four centuries before The Pillars of the Earth. Where the earlier novels were placed at moments of relative institutional development — the twelfth century, the fourteenth, the sixteenth — this one reaches back to an England still under regular Viking assault, with the Norman Conquest itself nearly seventy years in the future. The prequel strategy enriches the series retrospectively: the cathedral at the heart of Pillars had to begin somewhere, and Follett traces the chain of decisions about where a town might grow and a monastery might take root that explains why Kingsbridge sits where it does.

A Familiar Pattern in an Unfamiliar Age

The three central figures follow the established Follett template. Edgar is a builder’s son with exceptional talent and the urge to construct things. Ragna is a Norman noblewoman who marries into England and must navigate a court that resists her. Aldred is a monk of scholarly ambition and sincere faith. Arrayed against them is the customary Follett antagonist, the corrupt bishop Wynstan, whose malice supplies the plot’s engine. The familiarity of the pattern is both the book’s reassurance and the substance of its sharpest criticism: readers of the earlier novels will recognise the villain-protagonist dynamic at once.

Darkness, Literal and Otherwise

What the Dark Ages setting gives the series is genuinely new texture. This is a darker world in the literal sense — fewer institutions, less legal recourse, more direct violence than the later medieval novels — and Follett renders it with historical care while preserving the pacing and readability that made The Pillars of the Earth a phenomenon. At 817 pages it tests commitment even for devotees, but it demonstrates that the world-building beneath the original was richer than readers had any reason to expect.

Our rating: 4.2/5 — A confident Dark Ages prequel that deepens the Kingsbridge saga and proves Follett’s invented world has foundations older than its most famous cathedral.

A World of Danes, Saxons, and Slaves

The richest reward of the Dark Ages setting is the society Follett gets to reconstruct. The England of 997 is not a unified nation but a contested patchwork where Danes, Saxons, Welsh, and Irish collide, trade, raid, and intermarry, and where slavery is a routine fact of the economy. This is a genuinely different world from the institutional medievalism of the later Kingsbridge books, and Follett uses the difference well — the absence of reliable law makes every bargain provisional and every journey dangerous, and it raises the stakes of Edgar’s, Ragna’s, and Aldred’s ambitions accordingly. The Church here is shown in its full early-medieval doubleness: simultaneously an instrument of corruption and oppression in the hands of men like Wynstan, and the era’s primary repository of literacy, learning, and culture in the person of a scholar-monk like Aldred. That the same institution can be both is one of the book’s quieter and more honest historical insights.

The Reliable Follett Engine

For all its novelty of setting, Evening and Morning runs on the machinery that made The Pillars of the Earth a phenomenon, and that continuity is both its comfort and its limitation. The pacing is brisk, the chapters end on hooks, the research is worn lightly, and the moral lines are drawn clearly enough that a reader always knows whom to root for. Edgar’s struggle to build, Ragna’s fight to hold her place in a hostile court, and Aldred’s scholarly devotion are set against Wynstan’s calculated malice in the familiar Follett pattern of decent ambition besieged by entrenched corruption. Some readers will find the predictability reassuring and others will wish for more surprise, but the craftsmanship is undeniable. As a demonstration that the foundations beneath Kingsbridge run deeper and older than the cathedral that made the place famous, the prequel more than earns its place in the sequence.