Sequels... They can be comfortable (because of a preexisting familiarity with the characters) and wonderful, exhilarating extensions of an already loved storyline. Let's face it, if you're coming back for the second, you must have liked the first. Or they can be fails ~ to the point where you wished the author had stopped, dropped the story and never continued the journey. This one falls in-between those categories for me.
I really liked Alinor in the first book & was eager to see how she pulled herself up from the "waterboarding" she'd received at the end of 'Tidelands.' A hopeless romantic, I wanted James to have stepped up in 'Dark Tides' and become the hero for her that she mistakenly believed him to be throughout 'Tidelands.' Disappointed again. James is hopelessly flawed as a hero ~ too weak to do the right thing. And poor Alinor, 20 years later, is portrayed as elderly and relegated to the back burner, her life as much as over. She's still more insightful than anyone else in her family and she deserved more of a role in this update on their families fortunes than she received. Her daughter Alys was now in the position of decision maker and in most aspects disappointed me. They were both portrayed in 'Tidelands' as being beautiful, we hear nothing of that in 'Dark Tides,' nor why either had decided to stay spinsters?? I have nothing against an independent woman, it was just surprising considering the period in history.
Another of the storylines in this book was about Alinor's brother, Ned. Once a ferryman, always a ferryman. He's left England and is now in America, part of the immigrants that were trying to create a "new" England in a new land. He had a smaller storyline in 'Tidelands' and I think it would have been better to keep it that way in 'Dark Tides.' It was perhaps overly ambitious of Ms Gregory to go into all the ways the European settlers were cheating the Natives from the moment they stepped foot in North America. Him running a ferry across a river in America and the hardships of being a pioneer together with the settlers interactions with the Indians weren't really why I was reading the series.
The third storyline was the most interesting to me and it involved the 3rd generation of this family. Alys daughter Sarah and her "secret" assignment to Venice. Exploring the waterways and canals of the city was fascinating but where on earth did a simple "indentured" milliner girl get so sophisticated?? Maybe the sight Alinor possessed skipped a generation and went directly to her? It seemed a bit implausible but anything to expose the imposter we were introduced to in this book, I was ready to buy into. Which brings us neatly to the biggest new character in 'Dark Tides' ~ Livia. It was obvious from her first appearance that she was nothing but trouble. Thank God for the trouble tho, otherwise the story would have fallen flat. Her manipulations and machinations at least gave it some life.
I've heard there will be a third book in this series. I'll probably read it but I won't go into it with the hopes I had for this book.
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