Weir really is an immensely readable writer, with a gift for making history into story. Often, I find, historians can wander forth into byways that are, shall we say, less interesting for the lay reader, but the ability to popularise history is as useful as the ability to popularise science, and Weir has done the first in spades. I enjoyed this enormously as a result, though it does strike me in some ways as unbalanced. Well over half the book is given over to the first two wives, Katherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn. Naturally, given the effect of Henry's Great Matter on the fate of his country, there's a significant focus on this, but I think I would have preferred a more even page time between the six. I mean yes, I too tend to lump the four other wives together as "the rest," but earlier this year I read an excellent biography of Catherine Howard (by Gareth Russell) so it's not as if the material isn't there to give a fuller treatment to the others. They may have been queens for shorter or less influential times, but I'm still interested in reading about them.