Even so, Mantel was disappointed with the overall standard. 'It would be nice to think people were making exciting, new, 2003 mistakes, but many showed the usual defects of bad writing - an inability to keep the viewpoint steady, to decide who the book's about, or to impart information, so that it's done clumsily through dialogue. Too many people seem to go into print without editorial support and are left to sink or swim, when one well-targeted question could have brought down the whole edifice.