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Dissolution (Shardlake) | 
| Author: C.j. Sansom
Publisher: Macmillan
Category: Book
New (1) Used (4) Collectible (2) from £59.72
Avg. Customer Rating:  74 reviews
Sales Rank: 532428
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 400
ISBN: 1405005424
EAN: 9781405005425
ASIN: 1405005424
Publication Date: June 20, 2003
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| Customer Reviews: Read 69 more reviews...
 Too long by far November 29, 2008
Don't get me wrong; this is a great read. The atmosphere created by the author really makes you feel as though you're stuck in a Tudor monastery in the middle of a blizzard yourself....and you feel as though you need to continue with the book because of this.
Sadly I feel that it's over long and drawn out. 420 pages could have been trimmed down easily without losing any of the main plot.
One other thing....I found it difficult to follow the plot when all of the main suspects are called Brother something.
 Great Murder Mystery set in tudor times November 24, 2008
I absolutely loved this book. I was so sad when it finished! The characters come to life effortlessly, and you really do sympathise with Shardlake. He is a lovely character and you're rooting for him all the way through. Although a lot of the book is set inside the monastery, the scenes bring to life how hard life must have been for people and you get sucked into the day to day struggles of the characters.
I recommend this to anyone who loves good, gritty, intelligent historic fiction.
I am already half way through Dark Fire and it's not disappointing!
 Monks and mayhem on the south coast.... November 19, 2008
Plenty of people have compared this book to Eco's Name of the Rose, which is a little unfair (rather in the way every single fantasy book is somehow related back to JRRTolkien)as that sets some pretty big boots to fill! The parallells are sometimes very strong- no spoilers- but this is a very different book, and for me lacks the intensity, originality and dazzling plot of the former. But enough about Eco! This is a well written and capable story, the characters are simply sketched and develop with the plot. Everything is carefully set up and Sansom is someone who knows his stuff. It reads just like what its meant to be: a report by a careful and officious clerk, though I think it looses dramatic potential for it at times. The ending is rather too neat and predictable, and I find the lead characters agnosticism and postmodernism rather garishly anachronistic. It ticks all the boxes, but won't upset any apple-carts. Perfect for a winters reading by ther fire.....
 Name of the Rose it ain't November 18, 2008
Sorry, it's a murder mystery set in a monastery of grotesque monks with an ever increasing body count, a historical setting and a standard flawed detective and his questioning young side kick. But it isn't the Name of the Rose. The anachronism of the genre to the period which Eco explores so well is not appreciated here. The author has no real understanding of the Tudor period, as opposed to knowledge of the facts. Servants are not just incumberances to be shooed away when the principal characters need privacy. No Abbot or Justice would pour out drinks for their own guests, no Commissioner would pull a door bell himself. But of course ubiqitous servants don't allow a 20th Century-style detective to solve a sealed room mystery. The author does not know what he needs to look up. The Penitent Thief is not Barabbas, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologia would not fit into a desk drawer, if indeed desks with locked drawers were a common feature of Tudor studies. And an 'amusing' reference to the Name of the Rose only serves to emphasise how inferior this. Sorry, just another Inspector Morse in tights,
Excellent and revealing historical whodunit November 10, 2008
I discovered the 'Shardlake' series by accident and actually read the last one first .. so back I went to the beginning to see what had lead up to the end. Not that I needed to; the books are self-contained, but I was fascinated enough to want to do that.
And that's the key to this series, I think. It is fascinating. If we are not careful, history lessons teach us that Henry VIII abolished Catholicism, razed the monasteries for their wealth and the whole country shouted 'allelujah' and converted on the spot to the new religion. As CJ Sansom shows us, it wasn't like that at all. And that was part of the fascination for me. What actually did happen when Henry broke from the Catholic church? How did it affect every day life and every day people in England? The power and politics behind that momentous decision plus the knock-on effects are clearly shown in this series.
Shardlake is sent to investigate a murder in a monastery. The world of the Tudor monastery, fighting to maintain itself against (substantiated) accusations of all manner of wrong-doing, is blown apart by the murder and the subsequent investigations.
The detective story is equally as fascinating as the history, which is inserted seamlessly into the narrative.
Historical fiction writing of a very high degree indeed. I recommend it to all fans of historical fiction/detective fiction.
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