Friday Book Blogging

This week's book blog is a no-brainer. I have no winner or loser because I only managed one book this week. In my defense, it was over 600 pages.
C.J. Sansom has been a Friday Book Blog honorable mention in the past. And naturally, at 600+ pages, the book has to be good or I wouldn't have made the effort, so just because he wins by default, doesn't mean it's not worth checking out Heartstone (or any of the other Matthew Shardlake Tudor mysteries in the series).
Shardlake is a hunchback lawyer who manages to embroil himself in the sticky intrigues of Henry VIII's court and emerge with his head still attached to his crooked shoulders. Sansom expertly recreates 16th century London and populates it with all the flotsam and jetsam that probably inhabited the real thing. Shardlake's assistant Jack Barak strikes a slightly off note, but is likable nonetheless and the author does venture a little bit too much into sentimentality with his main character, but it fits his sensitivity so I tried to overlook it.
The central plot is tied into the overarching theme of King Henry's war and the upcoming battle (which we now know as the Battle of the Solent). Skillfully woven into the fiction are enough historical facts, making the narrative more believable.
The first in the series, Dissolution, will get you hooked on the characters. Heartstone follows the same people eight years later. And in Henry's England, eight years is a lifetime.