The Bastard is told in third-person narrative from the point of view of Philip Kent, the central character. The later volumes become more impersonal and objective and are related by an omniscient narrator as is Homeland (1993). Somewhere in the first section of each subsequent novel, there appears a brief summary of the preceding story thereby enabling the reader to pick up the series at almost any point.

The first book in the epic adventure begins with a dream, a foreboding of the situations that will evolve. Using the wind as a metaphor — the winds of luck and the changing circum stances — the author describes the trials and tribulations, the glory and defeat, of the Kent family. The actions shift from character to character, especially in The Rebels and The Seekers where one or two chapters deal with a person's life before his story is temporarily shelved...