Part two of the Cromwell trilogy is surgical where the first was all about scale. Focus on the final year of Queen Anne Boleyn's reign and the machinations it takes to dispose a monarch. Mantel's Cromwell yet again take center stage as the benevolent, conniving, generous, ruthless, protective, loyal servant of Henry VIII...and himself. Removed to the point of having a third person POV, Cromwell navigates the deeply paternal and rigid Tudor Court. Though his motives are mysterious, his aim and execution is not. Power, politics, religion, social structures, jealousy, ambition and more drive the characters to the end game, and for a few, their end. The sequel augments and concentrates the strengths of the first.

I loved this book but not as much as Wolf Hall. Here it felt like the immediacy and intimacy with our boy T Cromwell - with everyone really - was diminished. It was looking at the throbbing heart on an operating table, rather than racing around through bloody ventricles and veins. If you read the first one then for god's sake read this one too, and if you haven't read the first one yet then this is no place to start.

Third time around with this trilogy. It’s sublime.

More of the same witty early moderns: modern speech atop medieval action. (Anachronistically witty, sceptical?) Mantel manages to make all the tiresome court manoeuvring interesting just by having it pass through Cromwell, her sensitive, competent monster. Halfway through, Cromwell turns from rational underdog to corrupt totalitarian. Or, halfway through you realise that this turn has happened, that this aspect was there. He kills his enemies based on hearsay and jokes, zero physical and eyewitness evidence. Mantel manages this fall in a smooth and inevitable way. I complain about current legal systems a lot, but at least their errors are not this unjust and merely political. When Gregory says, 'Are they guilty?' he means, 'Did they do it?' But when [Thomas] says, 'Are they guilty?' he means, 'Did the court find them so?' The lawyer's world is entire unto itself, the human pared away. It was a triumph, in a small way, to unknot the entanglement of thighs and tongues, to take that mass of heaving flesh and smooth it on to white paper: as the body, after the climax, lies back on white linen. He has seen beautiful indictments, not a word wasted. “Nothing makes you falter,” Wyatt says. He says it with a reluctant admiration that is close to dread. But he, Cromwell, thinks, I did falter but no one knows it, reports have not gone abroad. Wyatt did not see me walk away from Weston’s interrogation. Wyatt did not see me when Anne asked me what I believed in my heart. He rests his eyes on the prisoner, he takes his seat. He says softly, “I think I have been training all my years for this. I have served an apprenticeship to myself.” His whole career has been an education in hypocrisy. Lots of artistic licence, to patch over the huge gaps in the historical record (as Mantel admits in the postscript). Cromwell is sympathetic here, even with all the blood and lies - you notice his evil only after effort. But this is just the same treatment that Thomas More has enjoyed for a hundred years, in several beautiful retcons. And the worst of the blood and the torture came after both of them. Maybe 4 stars later

Great. Poetic at times and wonderfully crafted, Bring Up The Bodies revokes and complements the strong character of Thomas Cromwell from the earlier Wolf Hall. The prose seemed much clearer and the best scenes were the interrogation of the suitors and the fall of Anne Boleyn. Magnificent.

It's a long wait for the bodies to be brought, but Mantel, through her champion Thomas Cromwell, makes the wait a delectable pastry served at the closing of a rich seven-course. Beginning where Wolf Hall ended, Bodies immediately gives the indication that, somewhere, in an executioner's backyard, a whetstone is being readied. England is shown threatened less by invasions and more by what the gospels permit or forbid, and even more by the temperament and the ironic strength of her ruler, King Henry the eighth. Heroism, in Bodies, is a dinner conversation put to a satisfying end. As Cromwell sneaks up on his next victim of political intrigue, you invariably straighten up, your eyes widen, and you expect the conversations, seasoned with the belittling of women, adultery, family, power, god and money, to spice up the matters of a court hall better than most writers can imagine when they set out to write their first word. In truth, it is hard to imagine Mantel's discomfort in penning down the emotions and character of men who have been raised and molded to caption a queen's motto as "Bound to obey and serve". But through that itch, Mantell, with her enviable repository of language, her penchant to make even the most dully placed conversations worth reading twice, and above all, with her honest desire to make Thomas Cromwell known to the world as the man who is quite simply summed up by this: The things you think are the disasters in your life are not the disasters really. Almost anything can be turned around: out of every ditch, a path, if you can only see it.

As great as part one. I pity Anne Boleyn and all the other women who are not more than mere possessions of their men. I wonder how we missed detecting all that misogony in our history.

As for Cromwell, he plans his revenges and gets them all, yet he never understands that the reason for all that revenge is the king, not the persons carrying out the kings wishes.

And so Cromwell is also carrying out whatever the king wishes, not ever thinking for a second whether morals, law, ethics are damaged when he does what he dors for the king. And one day, Cromwell will be sorted out and executed like all his victims. The only one never blamed is Henry VIII, yet every deed originates with him. And he will not be executed.

Just as good, if not better than the first one!

Enjoyable, but I feel the same as I did with Wolf Hall. I dislike that the text is so light on description and relies so heavily on dialogue rather than painting a scene. Again the dialogue is very good, but there are sections that are boring, even if they become important later. Mixed bag for me.

Not as compelling as Wolf Hall but excellent nevertheless. What a man will do to have his own way and it's impact on history is fascinating. Thomas Cromwell is a lesson to be remembered: it is not the ones full of bombast and hot air which are the most dangerous but the ones who quietly observe...and plan. Highly recommended.

the structure and pacing here was perfect

Just as good, if not better than the first one!

Worth reading but not a fun read It was more of a slog than was Wolf Hall. But interesting for its depiction of the time and place.

It's not the worst book I've read, but I can't say I really loved it either. It is definitely better to try to follow after reading Wolf Hall. You get more of a build up to this action. My main issue isn't really Mantel's fault- she's not really writing a plot, is she? We all know what will happen. I mean sure, she's picked put the points to show off and probably invented dialogue and stuff, but overall she's really just recounting the history as told to us by bystanders. Rarely do you see action, Mantel is all dialogue. And she feels like she falls into the George R.R. Martin trap of telling us, rather than showing us, the important bits. I don't know, I wish she had made the whole thing more dramatic I guess. If you want politics, here you are! Just a bunch of old, white men sitting around and figuring out how to replace the queen for not birthing a son, even though sperm is to blame for that.

I would recommend this book to anyone who desires to inhabit a character, to really sink their mental mandibles into some good meaty writing and to almost sense the world described. It makes no difference if you're not attracted to historical fiction, this is just top level lit, and amply rewards a little patience, in getting into the style of the first book. Wolf Hall

it is no small enterprise, to bring down a queen of England. (362) I came to this novel without any pre-existing personal investment. I know the Henry VIII history, but have never been a fan of it. I've read Mantel' previous book, the very fine Wolf Hall, but haven't read much other fiction, nor seen many movies or tv shows on it. Given what I've seen of Anne Boleyn fandom, it seems important to put my cards on the table before reviewing Bring Up the Bodies. And what a delicious novel it is. The plot concerns the downfall of Henry VIII's second wife, Anne Boleyn. Mantel's protagonist is Thomas Cromwell, usually seen as a dour villain, but portrayed here as a sympathetic, canny official. Cromwell is ambitious, but not a sadist. He seems ambivalent about Anne, and devoted to Henry's wishes. When Henry wants to be rid of this troublesome wife after she fails to produce an heir, Cromwell moves into action. It's a dense novel in some ways. It's a sequel, and draws heavily on the first book. Many events and scenes from Wolf play key roles in Bring: the fall of Katherine, Henry's first wife; the fall of cardinal Wolsey, Cromwell's dear patron; Cromwell's youth. The climax of Bring is structured in part by Cromwell getting revenge on four men for their actions in a parody play from Wolf. Mantel refreshes the reader's memory, so there's no need to reread #1 before starting #2. It is also dense politically and historically, which is entirely appropriate. Mantel sets up dozen of characters in and around the English court, creating the battlespace of Anne's demise. There is also a secondary swarm of characters around Cromwell, his family, allies, and hangers-on. The novel establishes most of these as at least recognizable characters, but the reader might want to keep a thumb on the 5 page Cast of Characters. This density has another function, making an argument that the story matters because it occupied a vital transition between two historical periods. The classic middle ages are drawing to an end: 1 May 1536: this, surely, is the last day of knighthood. What happens after this - and such pageants will continue - will be no more than a dead parade with banners, a contest of corpses. (287-8) A new age is dawning: But chivalry's day is over. One day soon moss will grow in the tilt [jousting] yard. The days of the moneylender have arrived, and the days of the swaggering privateer; banker sits down with banker, and kings are their waiting boys. (141-2) The duality of Henry/Cromwell embodies this, opposing Henry's courtliness and pugilism with Cromwell's financial skills. To an extent Cromwell himself shows this transition, having been a soldier in his youth, if not a noblemen, and becoming a major banker as an adult. One of the book's pleasures is its lyrical descriptive passages, starting from its wild opening lines: His children are falling from the sky. He watches from horseback, acres of England stretching behind him; they drop, gilt-winged, each with a blood-filled gaze.(3) Mantel has a fine capacity for pithy, funny prose that neatly touches characters: A commotion at the door. It is Christophe. He cannot enter in the ordinary way; he treats doors as his foe. (138) Or [F]ive minutes of rash boasting, in one ungratified life and, like nervous tradesmen, the gods at once send in their account. (275) Some passages are quite Gothic, like: [Queen] Anne was wearing, that day, rose pink and doe grey. The colours hould have had a fresh maidenly charm; but all [Cromwell] could think of were stretched innards, umbles and tripes, grey-pink intestines looped out of a living body; he had a second batch of recalcitrant friars to be dipatched to Tyburn, to be slit up and gralloched by the hangman. (38) And sometimes we get a nice black humor, remixing the Gothic: Christophe comes to him, whispering: "Sir, they are saying on the streets... that you sent two murderers with knives, and they they cut out [former queen Katherine's] heart, and that when it was inspected, your name was branded there in big black letters." "What? On her heart? 'Thomas Cromwell'?" Christophe hesitates. "Alors... Perhaps just your initials." (153) Moreover, the dialog is a pleasure. Some of it becomes tragic, as you might expect, but much is witty and sharp. Cromwell's retorts are probably what drew me to him more than any other virtue. Does this novel have any weaknesses? Again, I'm not obsessed with the period and story, so I wasn't able to find glaring historical wrong. The balance between Anne and Cromwell seemed a bit skewed from the nice dance of Wolf Hall; here Cromwell is almost too excellent a player, as when he brings an apparently dead Henry back to life (!) (168ff) and tries to create something like a rudimentary welfare state (204-5). Meanwhile, we don't get very much from Anne's perspective, and she is far less sympathetic until her execution ("Now Anne Boleyn calls for her glass. She sees herself: her jaundiced skin, lean throat, collarbones like twin blades" (287)). Moreover, this novel seemed somehow... simpler than its predecessor. Yes, it is rich and complex, as I said above, but it really turns on a single plot, obvious from the first pages. Whereas Wolf Hall had more events happening. Perhaps this is a formal artifact of the middle book of a trilogy problem, or due to the enormous presence of Anne Boleyn's story as compared to what came before. So, I recommend this for anyone interested in historical fiction, or just contemporary fiction in general. I'm looking forward to the third book.