Atlas, the story of Pa Salt–book review

“Everything will be revealed” is promised on the cover and the book absolutely delivers ad nauseam, but no worries, if you’re a fan of ‘less is more’ fiction you won’t have made it this far anyway. The Seven Sisters is a voluminous commitment. A terrific series, I would suggest, for when you’re in isolation for six months or have just moved to a new town and don’t have any friends. It’s a marvellously plot-driven story of beautiful, rich, interesting yet uncomplicated people, who jet around the world, find a birthright and fall in love. I’ve reviewed a few of the others here. Yes, I confess I have read all but one and enjoyed them, although still cringing at the ongoing shivers (there are ten shivers in Atlas and five of them run down spines). I finished the story today as I waited with a torn hamstring for hours to see a doctor. I can honestly say, hand on heart, in a hospital waiting room (and on kindle because the paperback is too heavy), this is the perfect book. You can’t start with Atlas, though, because you’ll have no idea what is going on.

I also read the Missing Sister by accident, thinking it was the last one and I just wanted to be done with them. Seven sisters, seven books, right? Apparently not. This eighth one, Atlas, the Story of Pa Salt, is the keystone that goes back in painstaking detail and tells you everything you didn’t really desperately want to know. Which is, basically, the reason why this rich and secretive middle aged man went around the world collecting beautiful baby girl orphans and hiding them away in his reclusive castle in Switzerland. Such a weird premise, but it’s all good. Everyone except the baddie and his son has good intentions and motives and is kind and forgiving and the baddie and his son get a bloody nose in the end.

Lucinda Riley, who wove such extraordinarily complicated plots throughout the first seven books, unfortunately died before writing this finale, but passed on the très complicated secrets of the series to her son, Harry Whittaker. What a challenge, poor man! He massively over-explains the other seven stories as the characters and their partners and the cast of thousands come together. It’s pure denouement. It comes over as a longer version of that protracted scene at the end of the Harry Potter series where Dumbledore and Harry meet in some mystical place and every plot twist is painstakingly revealed. Perhaps an absolute Seven Sisters fanatic was standing next to Whittaker asking: but why did…? and he felt obliged to answer. But he does manage to tie the whole saga up in a big bow with almost everyone happy. I do think his mother might have done better for Elle, though; she was always careful to look after her girls. Whittaker missed a clever plot twist to create a satisfying ending there.

There will be a time in your life when you need a read that will keep you occupied for months and don’t feel up to War and Peace. I give you the seven volumes of The Seven Sisters, and Atlas, aka Pa Salt, their weird dad to round them off.

Though do give W&P a go first.