This is no word for this book. It's touching, but still funny. The story teaches that the world is a better place with you than without you. Read this book when life isn't good, for it's very soothing. You will get a laugh too. This is a five star, two thumbs up book. That's why I highly recommend it!

The complete title to this novel is, "The Personal History of Henry the Eighth." It spans his entire life, from his birth to death, with a microscopic focus on himself and his immediate surroundings, with a few side trips to examine interesting individuals in his life. This book blurs the line between a novel and historical fact, sometimes producing fantastic results but other times, taking only the worst from each. The most intriguing and endearing quality, is the conversation for any person in the book is derived directly from their writings or letters, including quaint spellings or mispellings. Where the book fails is in the author's need to include every single event, important or not in excruciating details, often interjecting a litany of names, never before referenced nor explained and never seen nor heard from again. Entire paragraphs engulfed in only last names, or sometimes only official titles and obscure ranks. This piece could have been made, I think a great novel/historical study with the aide of a great editor, one not afraid to cut out chunks of passages littered with such minor clap-trap. Henry is portrayed as a massive egoist and an entirely evil man, so evil he might be confused for the bad guy in a bad action movie, but unlike the foresaid bad guy, Henry does not revel in his evil, but rather twists his rather flexible morals to make himself the good guy. This can be a very engaging read, but unfortunately, the problems that plague the text only occasionally in the beginning, dominate the final 200 pages. Really, if you were to pick this book up and read until the end of Anne of Boleyn, and then pick up a little in the Kathryn Howard section and then skip to the end, it would be a tremendously good read, but otherwise, prepare yourself to be bogged in some lengthy, detail laiden and seemingly unimportant passages.