PositiveSydney Review of Books (AUS)It is an expansive narrative ... The relationship between the reader and Cromwell shifts uncomfortably in this third novel ... we are finally positioned just a step or two ahead, able to see what is coming when he cannot. He is still observant and thoughtful, but Mantel skilfully directs the reader’s attention to the small details that he is now starting to overlook, the tones and inflections that he is failing to explore ... Thomas Cromwell may have been able to envision a better age to come. A reader of this bruising, brilliant sequence of novels might now be a little more sceptical. The arc of the moral universe is long in Mantel’s trilogy, but it bends more towards irony than justice.
