Final book of trilogy
This wraps up the saga begun in The Potato Factory and continued in Tommo & Hawk. This is one of the best trilogies I have ever read. The detail is amazing and I am told that the historical facts are very accurate, But more significant is that the characters and story development are very, very well done. All three books are fairly lengthy, but the story remains hard to put down all the way through to the end of this third book.
Often, the third book of a trilogy feels as though the author wrote it out of a sense of obligation rather than continued interest in the story or characters. This is not the case with Bryce Courtenay in the Solomon series. Although the story line foillows the same family, each book is distinct in style and feeling. The narratives switch from third-person in Potato Factory to first-person in Tommo & Hawk and back to third person in this last book. In spite of this, the sense of the story and the characters is not changed. In fact it helps to keep the overall story more readable, not less so.
If you have any interest in historical fiction, the 18th and 19th centuries or Australia, this series is a must read...and a great pleasure.
