The story arc of World without End again opens in the city of Kingsbridge, though this time in the winter of 1327, about two hundred years after the events in Pillars. And the magnificent cathedral built by the citizens of Kingsbridge still stands high to form the center of regional power struggles and family conflicts. Here, a leading cast of four children, the accidental witnesses of a mysterious case of murder in the woods, grow up and live through the gathering shadows of famine, plague, and war, only to find themselves entangled in a destiny that time and again returns them to the day their childhood ends.

Despite the prominent similarities in the framework between the two books, Follett proves himself to be a master storyteller with an eye for small, everyday details that once more brings the medieval world to life (in the acknowledgements of the book he gives thanks to the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England, for letting him actually "handle coins from the reign of Edward III" and test their weight). Even though the story spans altogether thirty-four years, it is driven by a momentum that, perhaps, recalls everyone's memory of their first time climbing a cathedral--at the end of a long quest to reach the top of the world, thrilled and exhilarated, breathless between one world and the next.