![]() ![]() All this activity may seem shockingly futile, unless survival – in and of itself – can be called a purpose. Events that might be meaningful turning points, or significant resolutions, simply generate further action. Friendships are made and broken, factions unite and fracture, fortunes rise and fall and rise again. That said, there is no conventional narrative arc either. Each voice and viewpoint is nicely distinct – there is no single lens – and the narrative often jumps in time when it changes between characters, leaving the reader the enjoyable task of putting together the full story. ![]() The sentences are short, as are the chapters, the language is simple yet sharp, and the reader races happily over the terrain. Ben Hopkins has written a good old-fashioned historical novel, alive with dramatic detail rather than encrusted with period research. A fat 600 pages, set across forty years of the thirteenth century, Cathedral brings together religion, politics, trade and family in a noisy chronicle of territorial battles, domestic squabbles, and the strains and rivalries of work. ![]()
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