Excerpt from Monsoon by Wilbur Smith, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

'If you go through life expecting it to be fair, then you will have many sad disappointments, my boy,' Hal said softly, and hugged his baby. I wish I could make it different for you, he thought.

'When you're dead, Billy won't let us stay here at High Weald. He'll send us away.'

'You can't be sure of that,' Hal protested.

'Yes, I can,' Tom said, with conviction. 'He told me so, and he meant it.'

'You'll make your own way, Tom. That's why you have to be clever and tough. That's why I'm hard on you sometimes, harder than I ever was on William. You must learn to fend for yourselves after I am gone.' He paused. Could he explain this to them, when they were still so young? He had to try. He owed them that. 'The law of primogeniture has served to make England great. If every time somebody died his land was split between his surviving children, then soon the whole country would be divided into tiny, useless parcels, unable to feed a single family, and we would become a nation of peasants and paupers.'

'So what will we do?' Tom asked. 'Those of us who are driven out.'

'The army, the navy and the Church are open to you. You might go out into the world as traders or colonists and come back from its far corners, from the ends of the oceans, with treasures and wealth even greater than William will inherit when I die.'

They thought about that in silence for a long while. 'I'll be a sailor, like you, Father, I'll sail to the ends of the oceans, like you did,' said Tom, at last.

'And I will go with you, Tom,' said Dorian.

Reprinted from Monsoon by Wilbur Smith, a St Martin's Press publication, by permission of St Martin's Press. © 1999 by Wilbur Smith