Rating: 5 Stars
Published: March 5, 2020
Pages: 759
Genre: Historical Fiction
This is the third and last book in the ‘Wolf Hall’ series, and I have reviewed the first book and second books in the series as well so if you have not read my reviews of them yet, you can go check it out in the Rovingbookworm blog section of this website. I went straight into reading this book as at this point I was so invested in the story and Thomas Cromwell as a character, and it was just a fluid continuation from the last book. It was as if I just moved into another chapter.
In this last consignment, Thomas Cromwell continues to rise in power and accomplishments as he serves his king and country through vision and delivering whatever the king required – be it to behead the sitting queen and her cronies and installing another within months. However, Henry VIII is insatiable and the great families of England refuse to forget that he is not one of them but a blacksmith’s son who has risen far above his station and continue to plot to bring him down. Despite his achievements for his king and country, Thomas Cromwell is brought down by his enemies and also by the laws he put in place to send others to the scaffold.
This trilogy if it was a performance deserves a standing ovation. and I now fully understand why it won the Booker Prize twice with books 1 and 2. The story telling is formidable and Thomas Cromwell, I grew to love, understand and empathize with everything in his journey. I think the way the author projected his mind as someone both intelligent and witty made for excellent reading and set the stage for the other characters to come to life as well. In the real world, he will continue to stand out as an inspiration to people who were born poor and from “lower class” backgrounds to believe that they can work hard and become anything they strive to be, even the second most influential man or woman in England and for that, I think it is something to applaud him for. This story also brought to light for me the origins of some British cultural norms and beliefs around a number of things that I didn’t quite understand, and this is one of the reasons why I enjoy reading historical fiction. As geologists would say, “the past is the key to the present” and this is true for history as well. While reading books 2 and 3 was like reading at least 5 normal sized novels, I don’t regret the time I invested in reading these books and I will continue to explore other books written by the author even if they are less popular than this trilogy.
It shouldn’t be a surprise to you when I say I highly recommend this book to all lovers of historical fiction. I guarantee you will not be disappointed by it. However, this is one of those series I would recommend you read chronologically to fully enjoy the experience as they won’t work well reading any of them as stand-alone novels as they are not written in that way. If you haven’t yet read these books, what are you waiting for? Go get yourself a copy.
Also available in eBook and audiobook formats on Audible and Everand.
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The Author:
Hilary Mantel is the bestselling author of many novels including Wolf Hall, which won the Man Booker Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award for fiction. Bring Up the Bodies, Book Two of the Wolf Hall Trilogy, was also awarded the Man Booker Prize and the Costa Book Award. She is also the author of A Change of Climate, A Place of Greater Safety, Eight Months on Ghazzah Street, An Experiment in Love, The Giant, O’Brien, Fludd, Beyond Black, Every Day Is Mother’s Day, and Vacant Possession. She has also written a memoir, Giving Up the Ghost. Mantel was the winner of the Hawthornden Prize, and her reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books. She lives in England with her husband.
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