The Armour of Light is the fifth novel in the Kingsbridge series by the brilliant Ken Follett, which began with the superb Pillars of the Earth, a story set in the Middle Ages about the building of a cathedral.
The Armour of Light begins in 1792 and follows through to the Industrial Revolution; the culmination of the Napoleonic wars with the Battle of Waterloo, and the emergence of the fights for workers’ rights, up to 1824. As usual in all of Ken Follett’s books there is a cast of true to life characters who immediately elicit sympathy, or revulsion, as the case may be. The massive gaps between rich and poor, gentry and commoners, and the cruelty inflicted in the name of class superiority, are almost impossible to comprehend.
All of the leading characters have back stories and there are intense, sometimes poignant and often beautiful relationships between them. There is a moving chapter towards the end which had me reaching for my Les Mis CD and finding the track where Javert reflects on his life and playing it in the background as I read !
This is a big book, 735 pages, but it didn’t take me long to read it. It was educational in the style of James A Michener, personalising historical events and bringing them to life. Industrial workers in the fictional Shire of Kingsbridge were already barely eking out an existence before labour saving machines were introduced into the weaving mills, devastating their lives. You know, living in the 21st century is not all that bad!
This is yet another masterpiece by Ken Follett and I humbly recommend it to all lovers of great literary fiction. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️+
Published by Pan Macmillan
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