It is epic in scale, and he does a good job focusing on the importance of agriculture and local markets and tradesmen to the overall national well-being. And how politics and warfare fuck with all that: the opening sequences of an unemployed builder wandering the countryside desperate for work are pretty harrowing.
But the actual writing is clunky, repetitive, and without subtlety or ambiguity. The Bad Guys are EVIL to their bones, and the Good Guys are Virtuous even when they disagree with one another. And the mystery powering the narrative ended up being kind of anti-climatic, as was one final character turn at the end which I found entirely unsupported.
Still, you do get a vivid account of the killing of Thomas Beckett, which I had not seen before. In amidst the multiple explicit rape scenes, ew.
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giandujakiss's journal
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Date: 2010-08-12 06:41 pm (UTC)But the actual writing is clunky, repetitive, and without subtlety or ambiguity. The Bad Guys are EVIL to their bones, and the Good Guys are Virtuous even when they disagree with one another. And the mystery powering the narrative ended up being kind of anti-climatic, as was one final character turn at the end which I found entirely unsupported.
Still, you do get a vivid account of the killing of Thomas Beckett, which I had not seen before. In amidst the multiple explicit rape scenes, ew.