The King’s Beast: A Mystery of the American Revolution (Bone Rattler)
The latest installment in Eliot Pattison’s Bone Rattler series, The King’s Beast follows Duncan McCallum, a veteran of the Battle of Culloden, as he sets out in 1768 on a mission for the Sons of Liberty in the Ohio River Valley. McCallum is sent to recover the bones of the incognitum, a mysterious ancient beast. He is no natural philosopher, but his time as a soldier prepares him to protect the prehistoric bones and a certain absent-minded “wizard of lightning” from a murderous, sadistic conspiracy stretching across the late colonial Atlantic to the heights of Georgian London.
Pattison has written a historical thriller that is broad-ranging, rich in detail, and yet very well-paced. I am a sucker for fictional explorations of the social and political dynamics of the American Revolution, and he has more than delivered. His portrayals of the native characters, especially McCallum’s sidekick Ishmael, are wonderfully done, and he manages to incorporate native perspectives in a way that feels natural. Meanwhile, he has brilliantly brought metropolitan Britain itself back into the story of the first steps of the American Revolution. As part of this, his depiction of his British Army blends traditional tropes with a bit of subversion.
That alone would be worth the price of admission, but the entire novel is a wonderful dive into this world. Readers should be aware that Pattison’s attention to detail and plot includes graphic violence and mentions of torture.
