Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #164 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-16
• Released on: 2007-03-16
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Independent
'Between them, Sansom and Starkey have the 16th century licked.'

Sunday Times
'A parchment turner, and a regal one at that.'

Independent on Sunday
It's deeper, stronger and subtler than most novels in this genre
(including Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose) . . . `

Customer Reviews

Great stuff, a little too long
This third entry in the Shardlake series is as detailed and vivid as the previous two entries. The plot is rather convoluted and I found it a little implausible, though I was aware of the Blaybourne allegations from my reading of Yorkist history, and, of course, it must be admitted that Tudor history is replete with true occurrences that the most fanciful historical novelist would hardly dare invent (would a novelist ever invent the story of Henry VIII's six wives? no, it would probably be too implausible to make up!). I also thought this one was rather too long at 650 pages and I got just a tiny little bit tired of chapter after chapter ending with Shardlake bumping into one of his antagonists coming round the corner yet again. But this was all more than compensated for by the last 100 pages, full of such drama, horror and twists and turns that, in the words on the front cover of my edition, made me unable to prise myself from it.

Pedant's Corner
I like the Shardlake books: the let a person while away a week of winter evenings and painlessly absorb some history at the same time. This one, though, wasn't quite up to scratch. Sometimes the psychological reality slips (such as when Shardlake has a tooth tortured out of him: I felt I was more bothered by it than he was). And I kept feeling that some of the details just didn't quite ring true... and then we set sail from Hull, and the whole book promptly lost all credibility.

Warning: pedantic rant follows:
I'm no expert sailor, but I have gadded about a bit on the briny. On Planet Earth, you tack when the wind is blowing out of the quarter into which you wish to travel. On Planet Shardlake, you tack because of light winds. Er, no. Tack in light winds, and you can come to a standstill.

Then they went all the way up the Orwell to Ipswich to get their rudder fixed, when they could have put in to Harwich which is conveniently on the coast. Then it took them four days, with favourable winds, to get themselves from Ipswich to London. Even allowing for the lumbering design of Tudor ships, I can't imagine it would take that long. A Victorian working vessel, sails, no engine, built for handiness and cargo capacity and many other things besides raw speed, can hammer from the mouth of the Thames to halfway up the Orwell in less than seven hours, if there's a strong blow on her side.

Mistakes like this spoil a book for me, as they make me doubt all the facts that I don't know and can't check. That's not to say that I won't read the next Shardlake, but I'll be talking some of the details with a pinch of salt.

Long winded !!
Long winded and not as interesting as the first two. For me Dissolution is the best of the lot. However Shardlake is a great fictional creation and certainly the best of this popular genre of writing.