Rating: 
Summary: Good, but I expected more
Review: After falling in love with Nathaniel and Elizabeth in Into the Wilderness, I was thrilled to continue on with the series. Much to my dismay, this book did not live up to my expectations. Is it a coincidence that Gabaldon's Voyager and this book, both set mainly upon the high seas, were my least favorite out of each author's series? Hmmm. The only thing that kept me going was the promise of the third book Lake in The Clouds. The book is worth reading, don't get me wrong. Especially for those who continue on with a series. The Scotland thing seemed unnecessary to me. I would have been happier if they'd stayed in North America. Oh well. Artistic license.
Rating: 
Summary: THIS SHORE WAS TOO "DISTANT" FOR ME
Review: When I read Into The Wilderness last year, it ended up being one of the top ten books I had read in 2002. Naturally, I was really looking forward to this second book in the series to continue where I left off with Nathaniel and Elizabeth.In addition to loving the relationship between these two characters, I was also drawn to the setting of Hidden Wolf Mountain at the edge of the New York wilderness. Sometimes I wonder why an author chooses to change the setting of a book when that locale was obviously so successful in the first place. In Dawn on a Distant Shore, Sare Donati forces the reader to accompany the main characters first to Montreal and then on a ship across the ocean to Scotland. This took away from my enjoyment of the book. If I wanted to be in Scotland, I'd be reading Gabaldon's Outlander series and not this one. With all that said, the main crux of this story is for Donati to get across to the reader how persecuted Catholics were in Scotland in the late eighteenth century and how important it was for them to keep their lands away from the Protestants. To this end, she has Nathaniel finding out that his father, Hawkeye, is a descendant of the Scott's of Carryckcastle in Scotland and the Earl of Carryck is very eager to have Hawkeye come to Scotland to claim his line in the family tree. In doing so, the lands of Carryck would pass on to Hawkeye's son Nathaniel upon the death of the Earl and would consequently remain in the hands of the family....Catholic hands. Needless to say, Hawkeye and Nathaniel have no desire to reside in Scotland so the Earl has no choice but to kidnap Nathaniel's children forcing him to come to Scotland to be reunited with his family. Have I bored you enough yet??? A major part of this story takes place on various ships getting to and from Scotland. Ever since I read Moby Dick, there's nothing I like less than reading about ocean voyages. The other major section of this book takes place in Scotland and I like that even less because you have to try to decipher the Scottish accent when reading. Instead of having a cast of characters and some maps at the beginning of the book, I'd much rather have a dictionary explaining what some of the Scottish words mean. It took me forever to figure out that "ken" means know, "na" means not and "tae" means to. The good news is that the next book in this series, Lake In The Clouds, actually has Nathaniel and Elizabeth back on the land they know and love. It also brings back many of the characters Donati's readers enjoyed in her first book, Into The Wilderness. Based on this, I look forward to this next adventure and only hope that Donati has no plans to return her characters to Scotland...they don't want to go there and neither do I with this series.
Rating: 
Summary: Great beginning...slow ending
Review: I was depressed after I finished reading DoaDS. Sara Donati, a rising star in fiction (and in my heart) disappointed me severely in this book. If you fell in love with Into the Wilderness (her first book) because of the town of Paradise, the romance between Nathaniel and Elizabeth, and the rich settings of the frontier, you won't care for this book. It's not about that. Elizabeth and Nathaniel seem less concerned with growing together as a couple, and more concerned with solving some Scottish mystery that seems to have been thrown in purely to churn out a sequel. The majority of this novel deals with the Bonner's adventures in Scotland, where a peer of the realm involves them in the warped history of his family that's somehow magically tied in to Hawkeye's past. Some of my favorite characters from Into the Wilderness, (Many-Doves, Runs-From-Bears, Liam Kirby) factor into this book very little. I still finished the book, but I found that it did not leave me satisfied.
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