Cromwell’s Reign: A Henry Darcy Story
Henry Darcy is a soldier on the Royalist side during the War of the Three Kingdoms, starting in 1649. He is a witness at Charles I’s execution. In a previous volume, Lord Clarke had confiscated Darcy’s lands and treasure after torturing Henry’s father to death for information. Clarke was originally a Royalist but now sides with Cromwell. The fact that Clarke and Darcy hate each other drives Darcy through the subsequent battles as the action moves to Cromwell’s invasion of Ireland. Henry has an Irish brother, James, he’s never met, and when Clarke’s men capture James, they believe he is Henry and exile him, with other Irish captives, to Barbados to become indentured servants. In the meantime, Henry tries to protect his wife, infant son, and James’s sweetheart from falling into Clarke’s hands.
I am not well-versed in this period and was glad to learn some things I didn’t know, such as the shipping of captive Irish to the West Indies after Cromwell conquered the country. Yet I had trouble getting through this book. There is little characterization beyond the painting of Clarke and his henchman as evil. Wiley provides a list of characters but no further identification beyond whether they were real people or fictional. I had trouble keeping track of which minor character was fighting on which side. There are numerous info dumps, and the book needs several more passes through a proofreader. It lacks commas where there should be some and has others where they shouldn’t be. In addition, there are misplaced apostrophes, choices of the wrong homophone words, and other jarring mistakes. While I admire Wiley’s enterprise in getting a novel published, I’m afraid it was released too early; it needs more work.
