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The Pillars of the Earth is terrible! It makes no sense, as in if you told the plot to Medieval people they would look at you funny. For example: they show the couple marrying right in the beginning (They agreed to marry in words of the future, then had sex. This constitutes a legal marriage in most of the Catholic world before the Counter Reformation and was definitely enforceable by law in England), so how is it so much of the plot hinges on them not being married? Another example: yes most people never traveled more than a day from their home village, but that other ten percent traveled widely. Merchants and such carried news everywhere they went. The building of a cathedral is big news and would travel super fast to every hamlet in the land. Yes, it might take twenty years for news to come from Poland, but England isn't that large and important things could be counted on to be widely known within the month.

It goes on from there, as the book ignores all the research done on the material life of peasants done since the fifties. Yes, the details of cathedral building aren't bad, but the plot and all the other historical details are pretty much garbage or so twisted as to be misleading.

Connie Willis' <i>Doomsday Book</i> is much better.