Aka the third and final volume of Hilary Mantel's Cromwell trilogy. Overall: the same virtues and flaws as the two previous installments. The prose is still elegant and intense. Mantel can be fantastic with both black humor, from on early set piece onward, the conversation between Jane Seymour, her brothers and Cromwell after her wedding night ( Read more... )

In which I finally get around to the sequel to Wolf Hall, which has the virtues of the earlier book while lacking what was my problem with it. The language is gorgeous, so is the psychology, and above all, Mantel manages something so often told as the downfall of Anne Boleyn into a riveting drama in the second part of her Thomas Cromwell trilogy ( Read more... )