This book is fairly well-written, and quite evocative. I found it an interesting depiction of some of the social pressures surrounding smuggling, which had a lot in common with other gang-type activities to be honest. Aaaand that’s about it for compliments.

Jones paints particular scenes and moments quite well, and gives interesting snapshots of character. Unfortunately, I felt like this didn’t follow through in the longer term, and the characterisation was a bit lacking overall. I also felt that the story lacks any particular focus, jumping around constantly between viewpoint characters without a strong sense of structure. Jones never establishes clearly which aspect of the story we’re supposed to care about: it flirts with adventure, straightforward historical novel, thriller, mystery and romance, but none of these dominates and the result is a bit nondescript.

On top of this, Jones doesn’t seem to have picked out a protagonist. The squire is the only sympathetic character, and he’s irrelevant between the first and last chapters. The exciseman is a potential hero (a touch of the ‘sheriff comes to clean up the town’), but he’s bad-tempered, hasty, and the story contrives to make him totally ineffectual. Adventure stories often root for the criminals, but the smugglers are consistently depicted as a violent and unpleasant bunch, who terrify other villagers into silence. Siôn Cwilt has a noble goal but his murky methods taint the whole business. Meanwhile, the amiable vicar is a disgrace to his cloth, cheerfully supporting a pack of brutal thugs, and even threatening a villager himself. The token heroine is hard to endorse because she doesn’t care that her brothers are murderous bullies who have the whole community in fear. However, it doesn’t really come across as a novel that’s deliberately neutral and noncommittal either – I get the feeling we’re supposed to be rooting for Siôn Cwilt, but there’s frankly very little reason to do so. ( )