Lucinda Brant knows her history and the Georgian world. Her Roxton series, the Salt Hendon books, and the Alec Halsey series give the reader the opportunity to become immersed in a long-ago England that is fascinating in its politics, culture, food, and fashion. I've read them all and admire Brant's world-building and storytelling. However, not all of the many books she has written are winners for me in plot or character development.
This fourth Alec Halsey novel, for example, is my least favorite of the four, but that's not because of the world-building or the historical aspects. Those are first rate here. I learned a few new things reading this (not that I knew so very many old ones) about 1700s England, especially about inheritance laws. Primogeniture, or right of succession to the eldest son, which I had thought to be common to all of England, was not the inheritance pattern found in Kent, where Alec's estate lies.
No, in Kent (and actually also in Wales and Ireland) "gavelkind" was the succession law, that is to say, division of property equally among all sons or other heirs. This is an important aspect of the plot, since "gavelkind" through the decades could almost decimate a family fortune through all those divisions of that family's property.
Another historical tidbit, about the Black Act of 1723, is another important plot point. That law was mainly a response to poaching and made it punishable by death. I'd recommend googling this law because it's more complicated than that, but the poaching aspect of the law is what's an important part of this story.
So we have gavelkind in Kent and a no-poaching law. How the residents of the area responded to these two laws to either circumvent or follow them is very important, and Alec and his family and life have been affected greatly by it. There's some fascinating devious behavior here in the story. And...Alec finally, finally, learns the whole truth about his parentage. And it's a bit of a convoluted truth.
Unfortunately, Brant seems to feel that her readers are clodpated slowtops. She goes over every detail here myriad times to make sure we are following everything well. In addition, secrets held by Alec's beloved Uncle Plantagenet and other characters were revealed painfully slowly, in such dribs and drabs that I became extremely impatient for all of it to get out. But no, we must put up with intermissions in the Big Reveals. So much time spent and so much repetition that almost all the big secrets could be figured out and were anticlimactic by the time Alec had learned everything.
It is lovely, I'll admit, to see Selina and Alec so happy and awaiting their first child. It has taken four books (and I don't know how many years of their real time) to get to this point. In addition, I appreciate Brant's characters and the fact that their relationships here aren't as treacly as I find those in Mary Balogh's or the more-recent Stella Riley's books. I like flaws in people and cracks in their relationships.
But that doesn't make up for Brant's wordiness and laborious plot development and the insult to my intelligence, with the implication that I can't grasp information unless it's said enough times to penetrate my thick skull.
- Paperback: 342 pages
- Publisher: Sprigleaf Pty Ltd (1 November 2019)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1925614514
- ISBN-13: 978-1925614510
- Product Dimensions: 14 x 1.9 x 21.6 cm
- Boxed-product Weight: 422 g
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