Thomas Costain has won a large and admiring public with novels of historical romance, most of which are set in the Middle Ages. In his new novel ["Son of a Hundred Kings"] he brings his readers back to more recent times—Canada in the Nineties—without disturbing the splashy colors which dominate his canvas. Substituting a vivid memory for the customary research—Mr. Costain grew up in Canada during the years he writes about—he tells the story of 6-year-old Ludar Prentice, who was shipped from England to his father in Canada, and enters upon various adventures, chiefly Victorian.

A spree of old-fashioned yarning, it is richly sub-plotted in the Dickensian manner with structural gingerbread and replete with disenchanting editorial intrusions by the author. Its three "books" are packed with curlicues of contrivance….

Ludar grows up with William Christian, a benign and dreamy inventor, and his nagging wife...