I return to this story every decade or so - there's something about it. Perhaps the universality of the central theme: Jamie, the Master, is shallow and flashy, but everyone loves him and forigves him; Henry, the younger brother, is brave, dutiful, smart, honest... but no one really likes him, except the narrator, a "confirmed bachelor" Mackellar (the stock narrator of many old time adventure novels).
This is also a powerful psychological thriller - there is action, but it is dispensed with quite quickly (the Master's adventures with Bonnie Prince Charlie are covered in a few pages; ditto his time among pirates). Most of the reading time is spent with a family being mean - the father and Jamie's ex pining after Jamie, treating Henry like shit, and Henry taking it so stoically you want to slap him, then Jamie coming back and psychologically torturing everyone, and then Henry gradually goes mad.
It's actually really powerful stuff that would've made a great Gainsborough melodrama with James Mason as the master and Stewart Granger as the brother and Phyllis Calvert as the woman with maybe Jean Kent as the girl Jamie knocks up. Or do a sex change - Lockwood as the Master, Calvert as the younger sibling.
So it's a harrowing read, with no terribly sympathetic characters - even the narrator got wearying. The book picks up at the end when it's just Jamie and Mackellar and the former tries to smooth talk the latter and they head off to America, with an exciting finale in the forests of America being chased by Indians, looking for gold and going mad.
The Irish soldier of fortune character was great fun and I wish he'd come back at the end.
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