Smith's writing is beautiful and does such a fantastic job of fleshing out late 19th century Chicago and the wilds of the South Pacific, that his characters actually play a distant second fiddle. I was completely captivated by Smith's poetic, all-encompassing writing and scene setting that I barely remember the plot - only that it involved the unlikely romance of an independent and wealthy woman and the barely-scraping-by son of a building demolisher as well as a sister and brother who are transplanted from the South Pacific to make a new life for themselves, only starting by playing savages for a rich man's spectacle. There's a lot going on in this book about adventure, exploration, wealth, and love. It's all almost too much to digest, but there's no denying that the picture it paints of a decade where so much is changing is as compelling as it is genuine. ( )

"Greed is good." Even though this famous phrase was first vocalized in a movie made in the 1980s, this phrase has dictated the American business model for generations. The only difference is that this greed that greases the wheels of the economy takes different forms as one progresses through history. At the turn of the century, greed took the form of height and artifacts. Dominic Smith's Bright and Distant Shores discusses at length the greed for each that gripped the country and specifically Chicago in the late 1890s. It provides a prosaic and sound warning against the greed which causes people to disregard the safety and health of others in order to be ranked among the upper echelons of society and within a global economy.

This is not a story where the good guy wins everything and lives happily ever after. One really could describe Bright and Distant Shores as the antithesis of or, more accurately, the reality behind the much-adored American dream. In true American dream fashion, Owen Graves and Argus Niu are poor and downtrodden. Graves has been forced to make ends meet since the untimely death of his father. He wants to win the girl but needs money to do so. Niu is maligned by whites because he is a native and by his tribesmen for ingratiating himself with the whites; it is the ultimate no-win situation. By ignoring their individual upbringings, those cherished lessons taught to them by their fathers, each manages to eke out some facsimile of success. That success, however, comes with a price and more importantly does not guarantee happiness.

Bright and Distant Shores is also a tale of two stories. On the one hand, the reader gets an in-depth look at trading during the turn of the century. On the other hand, the reader gets an in-depth look at Chicago and life among the fabulously wealthy and powerful as well as the working echelons of the city. Unfortunately, the city imagery and narrative cannot compare to the wealth of detail and exotic descriptions provided in the trading sections of the novel. There is a definite pall over the entire story whenever the action occurs in Chicago. The characters in each section are just as disparate. While Graves and Niu dominate both sections, the scenes held in Chicago while both men are still at sea are flat and insipid in comparison to the colorful scenery and larger-than-life cast of characters on the ship. Once everyone is back in Chicago, gone is the sense of danger and mystery, and the reader is no longer afraid that either hero will find himself in mortal danger. The story simply loses steam.

Historically, Bright and Distant Shores is a fascinating glimpse into the turmoil occurring in city landscapes at the turn of the century and the insane obsession with and fierce competition for native goods. Narratively, the story struggles between the adventures of island artifact hunting and the more mundane aspects of life in Chicago. While Mr. Smith has attempted to create an exploration novel in the more traditional grandiose fashion, Bright and Distant Shores falls flat once the narrative reaches land-locked Chicago. From a historical perspective, the shining star of the narrative is the fabulous array of details that allows the reader to easily imagine life in the South Seas, aboard ship, or behind closed doors of those who built and controlled the first modern-day skyscrapers. Mr. Smith's research is thoroughly and meticulously relayed throughout the story and strengthening the air of realism that already exists in this historical coming-of-age story.

Acknowledgments: Thank you to Atria Books for my review copy!

This is the story of a man who wants to marry a woman high above his station and so he sets off on a voyage to collect artifacts from the South Pacific for a wealthy businessman. From the descriptions of the Chicago World's Fair (which I am now more familiar with after The Devil in the White City) to the missionaries and already-corrupted natives afar, I enjoyed this slow-paced but fulfilling story. Many times when I expected the author to take the plot in a dramatic and predictable direction, he instead chose to keep it in the realm of the believable, if no less compelling, adventures of a ship of exploration. I found this book so readable that I will definitely be looking for copies of Smith's other novels

http://webereading.com/2012/02/catching-up-two-sea-voyages.html ( )

I found Bright and Distant Shores to be a slow but ultimately worthwhile read. I generally enjoyed the author's writing, which seamlessly interweaves a huge amount of historical and anthropological details into the story. At times, though, it came off as just dense - by about the middle of the novel I was getting bored and considered not finishing. I am glad that I did finish the book, however, because it turned out to be a very well-written, interesting read in one of my favorite genres.

I loved the characters created by Dominic Smith. He picks his subjects from among the awkwardly-situated social ranks often neglected in historical fiction: the middle class and the colonized peoples. Owen Graves is not quite the poor orphan in rags-to-riches stories, but he is not at all wealthy, either, instead being just a hard-working man courting an upper-class charity and museum worker. Argus Niu is neither a colonizer nor a "savage" - he is a fairly educated, well-spoken Poumetan caught in between the allures of white civilization and the traditional lifestyle of his people. All in all, the social positions and trials of Smith's cast of characters are quite fascinating.

The author's development of plot and characterizations is excellent. I never felt like the characters were left at all underdeveloped, and their motives and desires were clear and understandable. The plot, though relatively slow, felt complete. No loose ends were left at the end of the book, and I was very pleased that Smith continues the characters' stories well past the end of their Pacific journey. The reader is not left wondering, "But what happened after?"Almost everything is tied up, leaving a satisfying conclusion to an interesting and historically informative read. ( )

What a great adventure this is! Sea trips in old sailing ships, expeditions to collect artifacts, including native people, to put on display in Chicago, a clash of wealth and poverty, men of hubris and dedicated to lives of one-upmanship. This novel is filled with lovely (although not always loveable), quirky characters, wonderful prose, and a terrific story line. It's all the better for its glimpses of history, Chicago and the world on the brink of the 20th century. Occasionally, the writing was a bit florid for my tastes, but mostly, I loved it. Some of the more gruesome descriptions were a little hard for me to read. And the poor, old god-horse – well, that part is best read rather than described. This is a fun, fascinating adventure, and I loved reading it.

I am grateful to have been given a complimentary copy for review, by the publisher. ( )