This fictional opus opens with a boy being beaten up by his sneaky father. Fast forward to adulthood. The boy, Thomas Cromwell, is now a lawyer and friend to Cardinal Wolsey, who is rapidly losing favor with Henry VIII, due to his inability to secure the annulment of Henry's marriage to Katherine of Aragon. After Wolsey's demise, Cromwell becomes Henry's chief adviser, managing just about everything, including the annulment or the marriage and the execution of the stubborn Sir Thomas More. The plague seizes Cromwell's wife and daughters, leaving him to launch a number of promising young men, including his son Gregory and nephew Richard. Cromwell comes off as a hero—reasonable, witty, and clear-headed among a huge cast of lustful, misguided, and manipulative 16th century characters. Cromwell, of course, leads the pack in the manipulation category but does so with understated flair and aboveboard tactics. The author never lets us forget that Cromwell has succeeded in spite of the fact that he is a commoner, making his accomplishments all the more impressive. My biggest beef with this book is the plethora of pronouns with an ambiguous antecedent. I finally figured out that in most cases, "he" refers to Cromwell, even if I had no idea that "he" was even on the scene. I found this apparently intentional device on the author's part to be extremely aggravating and time-consuming, as I found myself continually rereading dialog in an already overly long book.
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