I don’t review every novel I read, and I especially don’t review novels just to be negative. There’s nothing to be gained in setting out to bash somebody else’s work, not for me, or you, or them. If I do decide to post about a novel that doesn’t work for me, the reason is usually that I see a big...
Beverly Swerling calls her latest epic about the early history of Manhattan "a novel of war and desire," but it contains a lot more desire than war. In fact, war is pretty far down its list of ingredients -- below pirates, prostitutes, runaway slaves, Chinese gangsters, man-eating rats, kidnappin...
I'm so glad this was good because it's very long and has very tiny type. Sometimes when it takes me this long to read a book, I feel like I'm stuck in it and all I can think about is what I want to read next. I almost didn't want this one to end. It was all so interesting and well-written. I love...
Beverly Swerling did a very good job of making history interesting in this book. The plot was complicated enough to keep me reading, which is usually hard, and kept me from guessing exactly what would happen next; I did occasionally get the feeling of "oh-no-I-know-what-this-character-is-going-t...