After Culloden, Iain MacGillivray was left injured on Drumossie Moor. Wounded, his face brutally scarred from grapeshot, he survived only by pretending to be dead as the Redcoats patrolled the corpses of his Jacobite comrades. Six years later, with the clan chiefs routed and the Highlands subsumed into the British state, Iain lives a quiet life as a bookshop owner in Inverness. One day, he notices a stranger lurking in the upper gallery of his shop, poring over his collection of Lord Lovat, the Old Fox’s, books. The man refuses to say what he’s searching for and only leaves when Iain closes for the night. Unfortunately, that’s not the last Iain sees of him; that would be the next morning when Iain opens up shop. He finds the stranger dead, his throat cut, and the murder weapon laid out in front of him – a dirk with a white cockade on its hilt, the emblem of the Jacobites. With no sign of the killer, Iain wonders whether the stranger discovered what he was looking for – and whether he paid for it with his life. He soon finds himself embroiled in a web of deceit and a series of old scores to be settled in the ashes of war, all over the The Forgotten Book of Names, which is said to list all the traitors to the Jacobite cause. Did Iain have it? And what will happen if someone happens to decode it’s messages?
I started this book not knowing what I thought of it, and I ended it not knowing what I thought of it; it was nothing if not consistent. There were a few characters I liked; Iain was okay albeit short-tempered, bitter, and horribly confused by life. The confectioner Ishbel MacLeod was brittle (with very understandable reasons) and #sodone with Iain’s nonsense within maybe two conversations with him., so she was enjoyable. Her son Tormod was a little too twee and “a little bit goes a long way” for me to really enjoy him and his magpie ways. Iain’s bookbinder Donald Mor was everything and I wanted more of his strange Scottish ways; I kept envisioning him as a younger, buffer Peter Capaldi.
Iain’s assistant Donald was harmless for the little he was in the book, as was Julia Rose the spinster who wants to get out from underneath her mother’s thumb and live a little, and Major Thornlie, one of the few good Hanoverian soldiers. And of course, Morag the Hell Cat. Everyone else? Was fifty shades of annoying, damaged, not in the book long enough to form an opinion on, or just plain evil. Though the character you have to feel for the most is Iain: his mother dumped him as soon as possible to run off and be a courtesan, his father cares more for “The King Over the Water” than him, and his grandmother cares more for the cause and continuing her husband’s bloodline than Iain as his own person; that man in some ways needs a hug and extensive therapy, in that order. But seriously; being Hector MacGillivray, the excepted skulker,’s son (and when did Hector become a Scottish name?) sounds like it would be similar to being T’Pring; I don’t know if Iain is comfortable being the son of a legend. Everyone is also well and truly interconnected to not only the last uprising, but is known to everyone else; there are no unattached characters flapping about in the plot. If they’re on the page, guaranteed someone knows them.
You have to definitely know quite a bit about Scottish history of the time period to fully understand this book; otherwise, you will be in the weeds, as there is no glossary, no real primer, and no stopping. Also, do not expect a pro-England book, because this isn’t it; this book goes to show why from now (the reign of George II) through his great-grandson George IV (in whose reign, according to the Sebastian St. Cyr series, people are still toasting to “The King Over the Water”), and straight through to Victoria, Scotland and Ireland were the cans in England’s “kick the can” tournament. I also had to wonder about when the Scots lost their apparent ability to put Aragon, Legolas, and Gimli to shame in their long-distance running; if they had kept it up, Scotland would sweep the podiums in Olympic marathons.
The ending is a bit of a peter-out, and raises so many questions, especially ones of how exactly Iain is going to stay in Inverness with what happens between him and two other characters. I honestly don’t see it ending calmly or well with either of them.
So can I recommend this book? Not overly. It was not horrible, but I can’t say that I would have regretted never reading it.
