The author's passion for his characters and their lives permeates every single page of this vast historical saga. With action shifting between a sedate middle class family estate in the Lancashire mill town of Burnley, to an often impoverished landscape in Catholic Ireland and then to the birth pangs of the British colony in Australia, the author handles an enormous cast of characters splendidly.
I found the theological aspects of the new Australia particularly evocative and compelling. A perfect book for anyone who values the importance of the past.

This book is not, as far as I can see, about Jacobite sons. I gave up before New South Wales entered the picture.
Here are the notes I made before I stopped reading:

First page and already there are problems. Cod Scottish dialect for one. Conversation (long) between people we don't know or care about. OK, it establishes their attitudes and therefore possibly characters but it's dull, tough going.

Page 13, We're whizzing though the years here. 1801-7 in two pages.

Page 22, I'm giving up. This is confusing, badly written, not worth the struggle. Maybe it's going to delight someone, but not me, sadly.