First, I highly recommend the entire Irish Century series to anyone with an interest in a 20th centrury setting for Irish historical fiction.

1999 is a coherent, concise, and engaging history of Ireland from the early 1970s through 1999. This, the last novel in Llywelyn's Irish Century series, contains much more history (relative to the fictional Halloran family story) than in previous novels in the series. This does not make the novel any less enjoyable for one who enjoys a well presented history, but may be seen as a negative to those readers who mostly want to find out how the Halloran family story turns out.

As with the earlier entries in this series, Llywelyn interjects events from Ireland's history along with 'touchstones' from world history to keep the Halloran family story in context. This capstone to the Halloran story is engaging and satisfying, with a touch of the bittersweet in its ending which, as with life, is not really an ending at all. ( )