Circle of Days by Ken Follett (Grand Central Publishing)
This time, Follett turns his attention to prehistoric times, when people lived in tribes as herders, farmers, hunters, miners, and female priests. These tribes each have their own culture, rules, ways of thinking, structure, and way of life. But they also have great ambitions. The Great Plain is by no means an idyllic landscape, but a place where people are forced to cooperate simply because the alternative is mutual slaughter. A religious aspect develops, making it necessary, partly due to the calendar itself, to erect a permanent stone monument: Stonehenge. This, however, requires immense physical strength, diplomacy, intelligence, and cunning. Seft works perfectly precisely because he is not some epic warrior, but an ordinary tribal laborer with a clear desire for peace and a knack for invention, while the priestess Joia is simply another word for a great force and dangerous, megalomaniacal fanaticism. Here, the author very deliberately uses exceptionally short, almost dr...
