"Daugher of Fortune" is a long, meaty book, full of interesting characters who each have their own story. We meet Rose Sommers, whose carries unhealed wounds from the youthful love that destroyed and shaped her life; Tao Chi'en, the Chinese healer who did not believe he could love a woman until he met his wife, who is haunted by his love for her after her death; John and Jeremy Sommers, Rose's brothers whose British politeness conceals their deeply-rooted uneasiness with each other; and countless other workers, servants, prostitutes, noblemen, lovers, and prospectors. Characters disappear and resurface as their journeys draw them in and out of the story's web; we see men and women's fortunes rise and fall, love won and lost, riches made and gambled away, the past forgetten and then rearing up again.
That's what the story is ultimately about: the past and its hold on us. Each of the characters has a past, or builds one over the course of the story, and each of them must learn from it, build on it, and finally let go of it. A life lived in the shadow of what was cannot ultimately satisfy any of them, and their struggles to escape the shackles of expectation are powerful and poignant.
Like any novel, this one has flaws. The prose carries too much description and too little emotion: the narrator holds back from her characters, looking at their lives too much from the outside. The ending is limp and understated; an additional fifty pages would go far towards closing the story with the same power that began it. But there are strengths that outweigh the difficulties: a detailed and intricate and surprising plot, the characters, a subtle touch of magical realism, and the joy of reading such a big, wholesome book.