Die Erben Kains

A lot of this review will sound negative, so I want to start by saying that this is a compelling book that handles the whole North vs South conflict with an appropriate complexity and I mostly enjoyed it. However, sometimes it was just too much drama for me. While most characters are easy to like, I think the author played too safe in regards to them, catering to a more conservative (or maybe contemporary to the 80s) audience. An example of that would be that the women were either angles or b*tches (either they almost ever commit to societal rules or they don't because they are a bad person), but it's not just an issue with the female characters. For my personal taste, there were almost too many characters to actually care for them, but that allowed for a lot of topics from that period to be included. So, all the favourite historical fiction tropes are probably in this book. While the writing kept me engaged, it didn't always convey the character's emotions properly. Sometimes I would only know what someone had felt or really ment in a scene after the narrator tells me. Also, there instances of insta love. All in all, this book contains elements that a modern audience might be sick of, but it also has some things to enjoy from soap operas and historical fiction. The politics are, at least in part one, more of a backdrop to interpersonal issues, but it makes you feel like you're in that time period.