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John Prigent
Homosapien
United Kingdom
8414 Posts |
 Posted - 13 June 2006 : 7:39:38 PM
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I picked this one up to take on holiday - had to wait till our last day for the books my wife had bought as anniversary presents and I needed _something_ to read meanwhile.
It's by Peter Smalley, and as you probably guessed it deals with a Royal Navy ship (the title's a bit of a giveaway). Not Napoleonic period though, set a few years earlier and dealing with a voyage to the Pacific to retrieve a lost cargo of gold. The first part is a bit slow, maybe, but I enjoyed it anyway as it introduced the Captain and his First Lieutenant, both very real characters, as they tried to get their frigate into commission ready to sail while coping with a very dodgy-seeming chap from Whitehall. Then the voyage starts, with a mysterious shadower, followed by a great storm while rounding Cape Horn, then the need for water forces a landing on an unknown island. Cannibals! Eek! Escaping with some loss of minor characters our heroes sail to another island - the first one meanwhile doing a Krakatoa! More problems there, not least the result of the first island's eruption in the form of tsunamis. Yes, the gold is found! Oddly, there's no account of the voyage home - we just get the First Lieutenant's return to his country home looking for his sweetheart - who has been forced to leave her own Vicarage home by her father's death, He finds her on the last page.
So what did I think? I enjoyed it despite the gaps in the narrative. This is more Patrick O'Brien than Forester, but with less gunfire than either - no ship-to-ship battles at all but the cannibals, storms etc more than make up for that.
Cheers
John
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HMS Expedient
