Heartstone by C.J.Sansom – A Review

Published: 2010
Pages: 634

With the fifth Shardlake novel, Heartstone, we’re rather into the rule of diminishing returns. It’s definitely a weak entry in the series. Very little is made of the (few) exciting events and the pace is too slow.

The subtitle of my copy says ‘Shardlake goes to war’, which has a bit of a double meaning, as Shardlake is always at war with someone. This time, though, there’s also an external war. It’s 1545 and the French are threatening to invade. Henry VIII is gathering his fleet and his army in Portsmouth.

At the instigation of Queen Catherine Parr, Shardlake leaves London for a village just north of Portsmouth, where he hopes to aid a  young man who was made the ward of a man who may or may not be cheating him. He also has a private investigation to carry out a few miles over the border in Sussex. Despite being warned that he should let sleeping dogs lie, Shardlake throws himself into both projects with vigour. Along the way, he meets friends and enemies from previous books in the series and makes a few new enemies for good measure.

In the acknowledgements at the end, Sansom says that someone else gave him the idea for the novel and I wonder if that’s why it drags so. Nothing much happens in the first two thirds of the novel and it still moves very slowly after things do happen.  I’m not entirely sure what the point of the novel is, other than to point out in a very heavy-handed way that war is bad.

As always with Sansom, the depiction of the Tudor world is everything. When Shardlake travels the 70 miles from his house in Chancery Lane to Portsmouth it takes days and Sansom explains why it takes days. When Shardlake attends a hunt, all the preparations and the hunt itself are described in detail. When Shardlake goes aboard Mary Rose it’s made very clear how much of a death trap she is.

The novel is driven by plot, rather than by character, and characters often do things out of the blue to satisfy the needs of the plot, not least Shardlake. The climax of the novel is utterly unbelievable. Despite all of that, reading it was an enjoyable experience.

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

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2019 Week Twenty-Three

Contrary to my expectations, Heartstone by C. J. Sansom is proving rather dull the second time around. It’s almost 400 pages before the first person is murdered and things still don’t get terribly exciting at that point. Even though I’m enjoying the world that Sansom has created, I’m finding some of it repetitive. Fortunately, I can’t remember the identity of the guilty party. That’s possibly because I didn’t care enough the first time for it to stick in my mind. The first victim is unappealing and the list of people with a motive is long.

The next book in my Goodreads Reading the Classics challenge is Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost. I’ve got a 1972 edition, which I bought secondhand. A previous owner has underlined and highlighted words and sentences with a blue biro. I use pencil myself. Manon Lescaut isn’t Prévost’s only work, but I couldn’t name anything else he wrote.

I’ve started my second German novel of the year. It’s Purpurland by Horst Eckert. It got rave reviews when it came out in 2003. I’ve only read a couple of pages and the vocabulary is challenging, to say the least.

Books read in challenge: 5

Books read in year: 25

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

Available now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon

 

2019 Week Twenty-Two

I have finally finished reading On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. I found it hard work and wasn’t surprised when I looked at the record on Goodreads and saw that it has taken over a month for me to read it. Although there are over 400 pages, it should not have taken that long. There will be a review next week and I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I say now that I didn’t enjoy it.

As a treat for finishing On the Origin of Species, I’m reading Heartstone by C. J. Sansom, the fifth Matthew Shardlake novel. I’ve read it before, so I know that it, like Mask of Duplicity, has a dodgy ending. It’s also a very long novel. I have a soft spot for it, though, because Shardlake visits my part of the world.

The next book in the Goodreads Reading the Classics challenge will be Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost. It was banned upon publication, so it should be a bit more interesting than Darwin.

Books read in challenge: 5

Books read in year: 24

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

Available now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon

 

The Matthew Shardlake Books

I wrote at the weekend that I’m not a big fan of the Tudor era or of books set during that period, but I make an exception for the Matthew Shardlake books of C.J. Sansom. When the new book, Tombland, came out in October, I decided that I would reacquaint myself with the characters and events of the previous books before I started reading it.

I had a bit of a setback when I couldn’t find the first book in the series, Dissolution, but a search at the back of the top shelves with the aid of a ladder eventually solved that problem.

I was surprised when I finally dug it out to discover that it was first published in 2003. When I had all the books out I discovered that they’re getting longer as is the gap between their publication dates. Dissolution has 456 pages; Dark Fire (2004) has 501; Sovereign (2006) has 581; Revelation (2007) has 550;  Heartstone (2010) has 634; Lamentation (2015) has 656; and Tombland (2018) has 866 pages. To be fair, the gap between the last two is not as long as I thought it was.

For those of you who haven’t yet had the joy of discovering Matthew Shardlake, he’s a lawyer who gets involved in things he’d rather stay away from by, before his downfall, Thomas Cromwell, and later by Archbishop Cranmer. Usually this involves solving one or more murders, but there are usually other things going on that are of great importance to the king, Henry VIII. Shardlake has three major disadvantages for someone trying to make their way in Henry VIII’s England: he has a physical deformity; he’s a Protestant; and he finds it easy to make enemies in high places.

Much as I enjoy them, there are some things that happen in the books that stretch my credulity. When I was trying to stop a friend from revealing the plot of Tombland, we talked about the other books and both came up with the same event which we thought incredibly unlikely.  If you’ve read the books, you’re probably thinking about the same thing.

Now that I’ve uncovered Dissolution I shall be reading all the books and, despite their length, I doubt it will take me long.

 

April Munday is the author of the Soldiers of Fortune and Regency Spies series of novels, as well as standalone novels set in the fourteenth century.

Available now:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amazon