WEEP IN THE SUN

Any dynasty tale which closes on a threat from an unseated heir to the family plantation is sure to beget a sequel but there's really not much point in starting this opus altogether. To be sure the protagonist, Robert Vane, touches all those steamy 17th-century Jamaican bases--impressed in England, he's an indentured servant who's wretched amid the alien cane. Then he's recognized by Colonel Wells and when he marries Wells' daughter, he's to take over the plantation. But in between Robert is captured by pirates, escapes, and returns to an unhappy marriage and his own estate, where he establishes his son by a black slave and his ""niece,"" daughter of the woman he loved and her black lover. Before Robert's death there's a plenitude of births, tiresome coincidences and die cut action and sex.