Review: Historical Fiction - Interesting, But Not Perfect
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 8, 2012
This book is four books in one.  It is the story of the Colter and Anderson families in the 1860's as they help settle Prescott, Arizona.  I felt like the historical aspect of the book was accurate and interesting.The fictional characters were, for the most part, complex and realistic - some more so than others.  They were characters that I became interested in and wanted to follow to conclusion.There was also a lot of action in the stories.  Sometimes, it was a little contrived and some of the story lines were somewhat repetative, but for the most part the action was exciting and kept my interest.  Some of the conflicts are depressing and difficult to face, but that is what drives a good story.Having said that, there were a couple of things I did not like.  For one thing, the grammatical errors were extensive.  Even allowing for transcription errors, there were far to many misused words, etc.  A good editor was definitely needed.The love stories (after all, this really is a romance book) seemed to repeat with each new set of characters, with perhaps slightly different conflicts, but not that different.  I find it irritating when "love" is suddenly perfect when everyone comes to accept God.  I am a Christian and believe that having God at the center of a marriage is vital, but I just found these books were a bit preachy and unbelievable in this area.Because the books are available separately, there was of necssity quite a lot of retelling of the story line in each follow-up book.  That was a little boring when the books were read one after the other, but I understand why it had to be.  I found I just skimmed a lot of that repeat stuff.I would recommend the book if the reader likes a good romance that is not graphic.  There are a lot of villanous characters in the book, so it is not squeaky clean, but it is not really offensive.  I enjoyed reading the entire series.I received a copy of the book in exchange for doing a review.