In this fourth book in the series, Richard Bolitho, just shy of 21 years old, has spent two years as Sixth Lieutenant on the two deck Trojan based in New York. If you've exhausted O'Brien and are hungry for more from that milieu, or if you've not yet met Aubrey and his particular friend Maturin, I can heartily recommend Kent and his dogged Bolitho. These flaws are not fatal to the story, though, and absent O'Brien's towering domination of this field, Kent's achievements are significant and considerable. Of course, all sides in any war will have their shares of madmen and uncivil conduct, but Kent does not seem to be able to capture the humanity of the Americans, which damages their believability somewhat. The rebellious Americans, however, are not depicted as anything but howling savages, apparently suffering various degrees of madness as they pursue the single-minded objective of destroying the British.

The British characters are well-drawn and the inner conflict that Bolitho experiences as he is thrust into various challenging circumstances is nicely explored.Įncounters with the French show them to be determined foes, but ultimately, civilized and even urbane, in both defeat and in victory. This volume follows Bolitho through the relatively early days of the American Revolution, and a campaign to deny the rebels their supply of war materiel. The gritty details of naval battles are rendered in all their glory and awfulness, and Kent does seem to do a somewhat better job than O'Brien at his beginning and ending of the novel - O'Brien novels sometimes feel like you've walked into the middle of a film, and had to leave after the denouement, but before the final scene.

Lacking, too, so far, are the intrigues and 18th-century spycraft - but of course, this is just one novel.

Like O'Brien, Kent works in the details of naval life, but this novel, at least, lacks the sparkle of wit that the dynamic between two unforgettable characters like Aubrey and his surgeon naturally injects. In the same vein as the Patrick O'Brien Aubrey/Maturin novels, this is the fifth in a series of novels of the 18th-century British Navy.

Gallant goodreads