Book Review: Lake in the Clouds

Okay, so I'm finally hooked on Sara Donati's Wilderness series. Why? Well, as it turns out, Nathanial and Elizabeth Bonner's offspring are more interesting than their parents.

Lake in the Clouds itself feels a bit like a space-filler book, because there's not a lot of significant action going on. However, I get the feeling that it sets up the rest of the series. This is the first book where Nathanial's half-Mohawk daughter Hannah is an adult. I get the impression that Hannah is going to play a significant role in the rest of the books.

Like I said, there's not a whole lot of action going here, per se. Elizabeth and Nathanial get caught up in operation that helps runaway slaves escape to Canada while Hannah goes to Manhattan to study smallpox inoculation, and then they all return to Paradise where trouble brews. One prominent character is Liam Kirby, a man who was taken in by the Bonner's as a young boy in In the Wilderness but who disappeared while the family was in Scotland during Dawn on a Distant Shore. It was always obvious that there was a special friendship/relationship between Hannah and Liam, and it's obvious in this book that Liam is still in love with Hannah. What I like best about this book is the way that Donati makes the reader uncomfortable. There is some complicated shit going on between Hannah and Liam, stuff that made me mad, but I still can't help but feel that someday it's all going to come full circle. I look forward to reading the other books to find out how this all plays out.