Kent Family Chronicles Part Three

This book is the first one to pass off the narrative flow to another generation, and I find Philip's son Abraham (named after his maternal grandfather Abraham Ware from the first two books) to be a generally likable and fitting successor to Philip Kent. Philip on the other hand has soured quite a bit over the years and I no longer find him a likable individual, his beliefs and actions are no longer consistent with his views during the first two books.

This book also begins to examine a slightly different spirit that resides in the younger generation during the westward expansion than existed during the time of the Revolutionary period. Many of the Revolutionary war veterans have lost the revolutionary spirit and have instead become gentrified and very conservative in spirit.

This book has some surprising twists and turns. I began this blog when I was approximately one third of the way through the book, and soon after it changes protagonists to Gilbert Kent, Abraham's half-brother. Gilbert is an even more likable character than Abraham, who suffers a character reversal after the murder of his wife and becomes a disreputable low life. Soon after the viewpoint shifts again to Abraham's son Jared.

In this series John Jakes seems to revel in throwing us curve balls, there are many episodes in this book wherein distasteful things happen to the main characters, which is realistic and interesting, but it's beginning to make me think the Kent family must be under some kind of a curse because their luck collectively isn't very good so far...Hopefully things will start looking up for them in subsequent books...

I have noticed that when a generational switch is about to occur, John Jakes has a penchant for pretty much dropping all the sub-plots surrounding the old generation even if they are not quite resolved. The character from the preceding generation, even if still alive, becomes a non-entity. When John Jakes switched from Philip Kent to his sons Gilbert and Abraham, the character of Philip had been changed completely, the change in his personality being barely explained by a throw off line that as people age their politics tend to become more conservative. But one of the things that bothered me is that by the second book nothing is mentioned any longer about the James, Duke of Amberly, Philip's father. I would have liked to know at least when he died, there had been some letters exchanged between Philip and James, so in the event of his death there should have been some effect on Philip and the family in the Americas.

Jared Adam Kent is by far my favorite character in the series so far. He's tough, resourceful.