Kings Landing

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

The pioneer village of Kings Landing is one of the main tourist
attractions in New Brunswick. Here visitors can experience the sights,
sounds, and smells of life in a Loyalist farm village, to circa 1840, by
visiting the many homes and businesses restored.

This work consists of a light, readable description of each of the 26
buildings in the village, more than 100 color snapshots, a map of the
tourist site, and a brief history of the United Empire Loyalists who
emigrated to New Brunswick from the United States in the late 1700s.

The well-written text is sprinkled with intriguing details and
human-interest touches. It is tightly edited and moves at a good pace.
The photos, however, while bright and cheerful, are mere recordings,
lacking in insight or interpretation. Somehow they make the authentic
buildings, furniture, implements, and activities look like modern
versions of themselves. It doesn’t help that the photos are uniformly
too small and compete with one another for space in the rather awkward
page layouts.

Although too slight to be used as historic reference material, the book
has value as a quality introduction to, and memento of, a visit to the
village.