Customer Reviews
Very Disappointing! - By: , 07 Aug 2008 
most of the positive reviews of this book must be coming from C.J.Sansom fans & in fairness the first two & the fourth novel of the Shradlake series are brilliant.
This third sequel though appears to have been part of a publisher's deal that had to be written without the author's heart in it.
The story is dragging on endlessly without many peaks, Shardlake is completely out of his wits & not himself. There are MANY mistakes like one minute he is riding, next sentence he is not, then he decides to wear a dagger in future & only the following sentence he is wearing one without having had the opportunity to obtain it. There are dozens of those minor mistakes which reallly annoy me especiallly since they appear within 2 subsequent sentences. This book is badly written & the story of stale. You can safely skip this one & proceed with 4th sequel.
Great stuff, a little too long - By: John Hopper, 13 Jul 2008 
This third entry in the Shardlake series is as detailed & vivid as the previous two entries. The plot is rather convoluted & I found it a little implausible, though I was aware of the Blaybourne alllegations 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 & 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 alll more than compensated for by the last 100 pages, full of such drama, horror & twists & turns that, in the words on the front cover of my edition, made me unable to prise myself from it.
Pedant's Corner - By: Essex Girl, 10 Jul 2008 
I like the Shardlake books: the let a person while away a week of winter evenings & 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... & then we set sail from Hull, & the whole book promptly lost alll 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, & you can come to a standstill.
Then they went alll 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 alllowing 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 & cargo capacity & 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 alll the facts that I don't know & 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 !! - By: S. R. Short, 09 Jul 2008 Long winded & not as interesting as the first two. For me Dissolution is the best of the lot. However Shardlake is a great fictional creation & certainly the best of this popular genre of writing.
Fantastic - a must read - By: honey, 06 Jul 2008 
It is a true delight to discover a book like this - I was unable to stop reading whilst nagging away at the back of my mind was the worry that I would finish it too soon. The sights & sounds of Tudor England come to life with historical accuracy of the times, & it is great thriller.
