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"This novel, set in seventeenth-century Holland, Restoration London, and Barbados, is the second volume of Jane Stevenson's historical trilogy. The Winter Queen, the first volume, told of the mature passion of Elizabeth of Bohemia and her clandestine lover, an African price and former slave. Balthasar Stuart, the secret child born of their love, is the protagonist of The Shadow King. Now a young doctor, he struggles to come to terms with his rich, difficult, and complex heritage. Neither black nor white, royal nor commoner, African nor European, he is in every sense a pretender, and truly at home nowhere in the world. Race and identity - great human themes, great American themes - are at the heart of this extraordinary work." "Driven out of Holland by the plague, Balthasar makes his way first to the raffish, cynical world of Restoration London and then to Barbados, a colonial society marked by slavery and savage racism. Every stage of his life is informed by the political and religious background of the era, and the rich, everyday human past, too, is brought vividly to life, in people's habits of thought and speech, their food and fashions, their medical practices."--BOOK JACKET.… (altro)
We watch Balthasar from his medical student days to his flourishing practise in London. There is a strange side story that seems incompletely developed. These shady characters play a tangential role in his life. It's hard to say how his life would have been much different if they never made contact at all. I get to wondering if I am missing some inside joke. Maybe the story of Balthasar, in some twisted form, is actually some classic literature and I don't know about the work or am missing the connection? The parallel tracks do reconverge, but not in a way that resolves the tension. Perhaps, too, the lack of resolution is meant to drive me to read the third volume. It certainly feels like a dangling thread.
There's lots of great historical detail here and the story moves along very nicely. I will have to read the third volume to see whether Stevenson ties things together! ( )
2nd part of trilogy. Thoroughly enjoyed, as blurbed: you forget it is set in a time that you have not experienced personally. Great characterisation. Sustained the story-line, despite the 20 year interlude since the end of the last book. Recommended. ( )
The second in a trilogy. This one focused less on the cultural clash issues at the heart of the first volume, & more on issues of race & class (& to a lesser extent the third element in that holy trinity of contemporary academic life, gender). It was also focused on the main character's efforts to reconcile the scientific practice of medicine he learns at Leiden, the leading medical school of the 17th century, & what he remembers learning from his father about African medicine. ( )
"This novel, set in seventeenth-century Holland, Restoration London, and Barbados, is the second volume of Jane Stevenson's historical trilogy. The Winter Queen, the first volume, told of the mature passion of Elizabeth of Bohemia and her clandestine lover, an African price and former slave. Balthasar Stuart, the secret child born of their love, is the protagonist of The Shadow King. Now a young doctor, he struggles to come to terms with his rich, difficult, and complex heritage. Neither black nor white, royal nor commoner, African nor European, he is in every sense a pretender, and truly at home nowhere in the world. Race and identity - great human themes, great American themes - are at the heart of this extraordinary work." "Driven out of Holland by the plague, Balthasar makes his way first to the raffish, cynical world of Restoration London and then to Barbados, a colonial society marked by slavery and savage racism. Every stage of his life is informed by the political and religious background of the era, and the rich, everyday human past, too, is brought vividly to life, in people's habits of thought and speech, their food and fashions, their medical practices."--BOOK JACKET.
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There's lots of great historical detail here and the story moves along very nicely. I will have to read the third volume to see whether Stevenson ties things together! (