I am just putting it out there that I am an avid reader, I love historical fiction, and sweeping epics are my favorites. I read a couple of books a week and I cannot remember in recent history not finishing a book. Sarum is slow and contrived. A great way to learn history? Not quite. Try actually LEARNING history. It is much more interesting. The author's style was so annoying that I found myself skipping pages, then chapters, and then finally slamming it closed late last night after getting to page 500 or so. The author uses big lead ups such as: Then two things happened that would forever change their lives... He continually introduced paragraphs like this that ultimately had little to no pay off other than minor plot twists. I wanted so much to like this because I find the underlying idea of this book very interesting. The writing style totally put me off, I found it mind-numbingly slow, and the characters completely forgettable.