Oliver’s Reviews > The Mirror & the Light > Status Update

DNF. I have reached my limit.

What is this book even about? Nothing happens. It's all very fancy, and very empty.

"... the Faithful Departed giggle at our miscalculations. The dead are magnified in our eyes, while we to them appear as ants."

"So scented, the courtiers, so urbane: the rustle of silk, the soundless tread of padded shoes. But slaughter is their trade. Like butchers in the shambles, it is what they were reared for. Peace, to them, is just the interval between wars. Now the stuff of masques, for interludes, is swept away. It is no more time to dance. The perfumes paw picks up the sword. The lute falls silent. The drum begins to beat."

You can persuade the quick to think again, but you cannot remake your reputation with the dead.

"But you stood firm and permitted him not so much as a nibble of your nether lip."

In an English summer you must make your own sunshine.

Henry likes to utter his sin and be forgiven. He is sincerely sorry, he will not do it again. And in this case perhaps he will not. The temptation to cut off our wife's head does not arise every year.