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Book Review: Revelation by CJ Sansom

According to Goodreads, the last Shardlake book I read was away back in… 2017. And it’s kind of weird that I never continued because I love historical mysteries (the Owen Archer series is set in the same era and I’m more or less caught up to it, for example)! But no worries, a friend of mine recently directed the stage adaptation of Book 3 in the series, which prompted me to resume reading.

Revelation is the fourth book in the Matthew Shardlake series and it’s an intense one. In a world where the “reformists” (Protestants) and Catholics are fighting for power, Matthew Shardlake is drawn into a frightening series of murders. Despite wanting to avoid all politics, Shardlake is drawn into the investigation because his good friend is one of the victims. Shardlake notices that the killer seems to be drawing inspiration from the book of Revelation and it’s a race against time as they try to solve the mystery before the next murder occurs.

I was so immersed in this book! The serial killer mystery was very fascinating and I found myself unable to put the book down towards the end. Revelation is quite a long book but it swept me away; the pacing was perfect for me.

And it’s not just the plot that held my attention, I was very intrigued by the world that CJ Sansom depicts. Religious tensions are a key feature of the book and I appreciated that Sansom showed the good and bad of both sides. It made the political struggle seem a lot more realistic since one side wasn’t a cartoonish villain.

That said, I have forgotten a lot of the characters so some of the subplots took a while for me to understand. Barak and his wife’s relationship, for example, was something that I had completely forgotten about. I thought that subplot was interesting but I also think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if the previous book was still fresh in my mind.

The lesson I learnt? Don’t wait 6 years to continue reading the series. I am definitely going to pick up the next book and I hope I’ll get to it sooner rather than later!

Featured Image: Photo from Canva

4 thoughts on “Book Review: Revelation by CJ Sansom

  1. That’s definitely one of the biggest issues we bookworms run into with series! That gap of time in between each book is deadly on our memory! 😛 I’m glad it turned out such a great read though.

    1. If it wasn’t for goodreads I think I wouldn’t even know where to resume, given that I’ve switched blogs between books! But yes, so glad it’s still a great series!

  2. I often go a long time between series too. I’m trying to stop doing so but can’t help myself. It becomes annoying to often reread many books before continuing with a series.

    1. Ideally I’d like to finish a series at one shot but if it’s good I also want to ration it out (which leads to unfinished series so… it’s really my fault lol)

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