Published By: Simon and Schuster
Pages: 496
Released On: 30/01/2025
It’s 1782, Daniel and his sister Pearl arrive in London with the world at their feet and their future assured. Having escaped a Jamaican sugar plantation, Daniel fought for the British in the American War of Independence and was rewarded with freedom and an inheritance.
But the city is not a place for men like Daniel and he is callously tricked and finds himself, along with his sister Pearl, in the rookeries of St Giles – a warren of dark and menacing alleyways, filled with violence and poverty.
The underworld labyrinth is run by Elias, a man whose cruelty knows no bounds. But under his dangerous rule is a brotherhood of Black men, the Blackbirds of St Giles, whose intention is to set their people free.
Can Daniel use his strength, wit and the fellowship of the other Blackbirds to overthrow Elias and truly find the freedom he fought for…?
*****
Thanks to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for the advanced copy of this title in return for an honest review.
Lila Cain is the pen name for the combination of Kate Griffin and Marcia Hutchinson. I enjoyed Kate’s book Fyneshade but haven’t read any of Marcia’s. I’m always amazed by dual written books because is it like, do you write one chapter each? One character each? Do you each write the whole thing and then merge them together? Does one write it and the other edit? The logistics of it baffle me.
Anyone who knows me knows my general hatred of long books. 300-400 (but closer to 300) is my sweet spot. It’s not that I hate books out and out, but generally I find the long books I’ve read very rarely warrant being that long and then I get bored. I have read a handful of long books I liked, but unfortunately I do have a tendency to go into longer books with an already negative attitude. But I tried to ignore that with this book because I like Kate’s writing and I’ve seen some fabulous early reviews.
The 1700s is not an era I read much about. Thinking back to the historical books I’ve read, they tend to either be back in Shakespeare/Henry VIII time (so the 1500s), or the Victorian time (1800s), or during WW1/WW2 (1914-1945). I can’t remember any books I’ve read set in that time, and so that was a nice difference for me as a reader.
“The novel Dickens didn’t write, but should have done.” – Sean Lusk
Okay, so that’s some big words. I am a Dickens obsessive and quite protective over anything that links to his work, because rarely does it actually match up. But I do have to agree with Sean here. There’s definitely a sense of David Copperfield or Oliver Twist about it.
It isn’t an easy book to read. It shouldn’t come as a surprise considering it’s about characters of colour in the 1700s. They were not treated nicely and I wish I could say it’s just fictional, but as we all know it is all too real. And Kate and Marcia have not sugar coated things. It is hard and harsh and raw and bloody and uncomfortable, but it’s equally as important to read because of how hard it is.
There are a lot of characters – goodies and baddies, slave owners and the enslaved, friends and foes – and so I won’t go into detail about them or we’ll be here forever. But our main character is Daniel, with the secondary main character being his sister Pearl. Daniel is not perfect and nor does he pretend to be so. He makes mistakes, he hurts people, and he keeps too much in and pushes people away, but he’s a fabulous creation. Together, they are delightful. They’ve been through things you wouldn’t wish upon your worst enemy and yet (or maybe because of) they still have this fire within them, they’re so powerful, they completely held this book in their hands and were mesmerising. I was on their journey with them and really wanted them to succeed.
Kate and Marcia have created such a sense of atmosphere – you can smell the murkiness in the air, you can put yourself into the story and it’s an unpleasant place to be. But it really adds to the gravitas to the story itself.
There were bits quicker than others and slower than others (which I expected in a book of nearly 500 pages). Some bits were given a bit too much focus and others a bit less than I’d have liked, but if you take it all together then I think it’s paced well for the subject matter. It feels like the authors want to make the reader feel uncomfortable, wants us to realise the plight of these characters and really immerse ourselves with them. And if you make it go too fast then we end up not caring about them. But by adding slower elements, it allows us to get to know them and what they’ve been through, and then this strengthens the whole thing.
It’s not full of twists and turns like a thriller is, but there are definitely revelations that I didn’t see coming, things that kept me on my toes, which was a nice surprise.
Has this converted me to the way of long books? No, I don’t think it has. They’re just not for me. However, this book was very much for me. It warranted being that long but I never felt lost. It had to be that long to fit all its heart into and I think shortening it would have been to its detriment.
Books By Your Bedside 