Cathedral of the Sea was written to relate some of the history of Barcelona and of the Church of Santa Maria de la Mar. Unfortunately for Ildefonso Falcones’ readers, even though there is some fascinating material here, this purpose is all too obvious.

The novel begins with Bernat Estanyol’s wedding. Because of his father’s foresight in making a will, Bernat is allowed to keep his father’s property on his death. Otherwise, it would be forfeit to his lord, as Bernat is a serf. Left relatively prosperous, Bernat decides to marry a shy girl named Francesca. However, on the night of the wedding, his lord chooses to exercise his droit de seigneur, his right to deflower the bride. He follows this act up by forcing Bernat to rape her, too.

This horrible start to their marriage shows no sign of improving after Bernat’s son Arnau is born, and more atrocities follow. Eventually, to save his son’s life, Bernat flees the land, making for Barcelona, where, if he can live for a year and a day without being recaptured, he can become a free man of the city.

The growing Arnau soon becomes the novel’s main character, and he has many hardships to overcome. Missing a mother, he becomes fascinated with the image of Mary at the Santa Maria de la Mar, which is just being built as a cathedral for the common people. The novel follows Arnau’s life and the building of the cathedral together.

Well, sort of. The book’s jacket compares this novel to Ken Follett’s Pillars of the Earth, but there is really very little comparison. The cathedral is only brought into the plot periodically when needed or when Falcones wants to tell us something about it.

And that’s the problem with the entire book. Although the novel deals with the themes of the medieval caste system and the problem of justice for common men, and also treats of the special rights of the area, everything is driven by the plot. Even with a third-person omniscient narration, we seldom learn what anyone is thinking unless it is important to the plot. Characters are not so much developed as given things to say and do.

The plot itself has no focus. When I read at the end of the novel that Falcones followed the Crónica written by King Pedro the Third, that explained a lot. To show this history, Falcones must put his main character through some contortions. Beginning as a bastaixo, one of the men who unload ships and carry their cargo into town on their backs, Arnau runs off to war and later becomes a money lender, an extremely unlikely sequence of careers.

Characters appear as needed, disappear, and then pop up again when they’re needed. This might make sense for some characters but not for all of them. Women are uniformly raped, die from the plague, become prostitutes, or are otherwise mistreated, as if Falcones doesn’t know what to do with them except have something terrible happen to them.

One of the worst instances of this treatment is of Maria, Arnau’s cardboard wife. (The rest of this paragraph is a spoiler.) During all the first years of their marriage, Arnau is involved in a torrid affair with another woman. Arnau wants to leave this woman, but she threatens to tell his guild, which will expel him for immoral conduct, so that he has no work. Arnau goes to war to get rid of her, and when he finally sheds his mistress, do we have scenes of everyday married life? No. We immediately jump five years, and within two pages Maria dies of the plague.

Finally, we come to Joan, Arnau’s adopted brother. Treated with nothing but kindness and love by Bernat and Arnau despite a rocky start in life, he becomes a priest, after which he disappears for years. When he returns, he has suddenly become a hard, self-righteous right hand of the Inquisition.

My conclusion? Falcones is clearly not an able enough storyteller to skillfully handle a complex plot and many characters.