Continuing with The Boleyn Series

"The Axeman Cometh"

The timing for my reading of this book was perfect as The Tudors, Season 3, is presently being aired on TV and it covers the same period in history as The Boleyn Inheritance does. Henry's beloved wife Jane Seymour has just died as a result of childbirth and he is encouraged to take another wife.

So begins this 6th Philippa Gregory book dealing with the life and many wives of King Henry VIII. This last book in the series takes on his marriages to Ann of Cleves and Katherine Howard. If your memory of what happened with these two wives is scarce, it's probably better because the book then becomes that much more of a page turner. I stayed up until 2:30AM finishing it because I simply could not put it down. I had to know what was going to happen before I went to sleep. With a book like this, it probably wasn't the best idea because it only leads to dreams of The Tower and the "axe". I say this is the last book in the series but I do not know this definitely because there is still one more wife, Katherine Parr, so perhaps Gregory is going to take us into that marriage as well.

This book has three different narrators and each mini chapter is told from their individual voices. We first meet Ann of Cleves as she is hoping to get chosen as Henry's 4th wife. Then there's Katherine Howard, who is hoping to go to court serving the new Queen. Lastly there's Lady Rochford, better known as Jane Boleyn. It was she who was married to Ann Boleyn's brother George and it was her testimony alone that sent him to the scaffold.

I can't tell you how much I enjoyed this book. Gregory intersperses her own dose of fiction into the already written history about these years in Henry's life. When you think of the time in history you yourself are born into, you can't help but think "thank God I wasn't born in England during this period". It was such a time of turbulence with an unstable tyrant of a King. I can't even fathom it and, more to the point, I can't even fathom wanting to be his Queen.

I guess there's two ways to read this series....either chronologically or the order in which Gregory wrote them. I chose the latter starting with The Other Boleyn Girl and ending with The Boleyn Inheritance. As it turns out, the first and last books written ended up being my two favorites. I guess an argument could be made for reading them either way but I'm happy I did it the way I did. There's nothing better than beginning and ending a series with two "great" books.

So I encourage any lover of historical fiction to read this book. You won't be disappointed.