I stayed up past midnight on Friday to finish volume II of Susan Howatch's The Wheel of Fortune. I was totally shocked to discover at the end that the story is roughly a modernization of the stories of family intrigue among characters from the Henriad (Richard II, Henry IV, Henry V and some of their predecessors). I should have caught on that the final father-son pair were both Henrys that went by Harry and Hal, respectively. Doh! I know I would have gotten even more out of the books had I known about the historical connection.

I was so pleased to see that Howatch's interest in Christianity comes out in the second volume. The Wheel of Fortune precedes Glittering Images by only a few years, and the continuity of thought is clear. Two of the big themes from the Starbridge novels are here in spades--first, that the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children, and second, that living behind a mask poisons people spiritually and emotionally. Also, several key characters experience conversions and work for redemption in the badly broken-down family.

The next book on my list is also a sequel. It's Children of God by Mary Doria Russel. It and The Sparrow were originally intended to be published as a single book, but the publisher had qualms about an 800-page first novel, so the book was split in half. Knowing this, I decided to wait to give my impressions of The Sparrow until I've read the work as the whole unit the author intended. If you've never heard of the books, they're sci-fi about a group of Jesuits and lay people that make first contact with an alien species in order to establish a mission on the planet. It's no ordinary missionary story, that's for sure!