Kelly's Reviews > The Mirror & the Light

Arduous and challenging to read. The cover is apt - this reading experience feels like drowning.

This trilogy is undoubtedly a masterpiece. Mantel possesses the astonishing gift to breathe life into history. Each of these characters is masterfully formed - they practically leap off of the page. At times I felt like I was watching a play rather than reading a book, the scenes were so vibrant, the details so real. Everything happens in its correct timeline, meticulously researched, and yet no scene or detail feels forced. Everything flows seamlessly forward in the river of time between 1536-1540.

Still - fatigue set in many times throughout the 3 weeks it took me to read this. I felt that Mantel referencing Cromwell's past, especially his childhood in Putney, was entirely unnecessary. This particular character study was weakened for those random meanderings into the past. They did nothing to aid in building Cromwell's character (already well-established in the history books and in the previous two books in the trilogy) and they detracted from the intensity of the events that occurred from Anne Boleyn's beheading to Cromwell's own demise.

I wish this had been edited down and that Mantel had continued to the end of Henry VIII's reign and through Edward's and Mary's and Elizabeth's. I wish this would go on forever. It is utterly brilliant.