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5.0 out of 5 stars
Undiscovered classic, April 12 2004
Thompson writes with an authority and verity that is refreshing. If you're afraid of sex, stay away, but if you can stand an unflinching look at the truth of a life lived on the hard side, read on.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Readable, very different from Hornblower, Sep 14 2003
This book deals with Lieutenant Richard Delancey's efforts to find a purpose and direction in his career after stagnating for several years. It is the second in a series, I didn't read the first one, but didn't feel like I'd lost much by skipping it.
For the first two-thirds of the book, the "purpose and direction" plot dominated (at least for me) the naval elements of the story. In fact, very little of the book covers dashing nautical adventure of the type C.S. Forester might have written--Most of it takes place on shore, and the ships seem to be just platforms and vehicles, rather than central elements. Naval battles barely intrude into the story at all.As another reviewer commented, the last third of the book deals with a spy mission similar to the unfinished Hornblower novel. In effect, the book is four different "episodes" strung together. It is adequately good reading, but not brilliant. The most interesting part for me was watching Delancey grow in ability, find a purpose, and gain confidence in himself as an officer and a leader. Not a brilliant book, but good enough to make me seek out others in the series (this is the first one I read). I'd give it three-and-a-half stars, if I could.
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2.0 out of 5 stars
Wooden action in wooden hulls, Jun 14 2002
Very little of this series, or this story in particular, takes place aboard ship. Parkinson clearly prefers life ashore to that afloat, his ships serving largely to move his wooden hero, Delancey, from one intrigue or action on land to another. Following an abortive raid on the Breton coast, Lt. Delancey, at loose ends again, suddenly becomes proactive and joins the coastal Revenue Service (as does Bolitho in the first volume of his much more exciting series by Alexander Kent). Eventually sent out of the way as a privateer, he runs into the shore and instantly constructs himself a spy mission (in effect this is the story Forester failed to complete in his novel, "Hornblower During the Crisis"). While crossing enemy territory Delancey gets into the most impossible situations and concocts one preposterous and elaborate cover story after another. It's fun to see how instantly inventive he is. These are really stories of naval people, not of the British Navy in the Age of Sail. The few sailing episodes are precisely correct, as if from an instruction manual, worse still when Delancey is just imagining what must be happening elsewhere. The stories do highlight an unusual locale, the British Channel Islands (the "cow" islands: Jersey, Guernsey) just off the French coast. They are not romantic novels in any sense of the word, but plotted in a workmanlike fashion to go where the author wishes them to go, no more. There are too few characters introduced to successfully, suspensfully misdirect the reader from the traitors along the way. Parkinson, of all people, should have known to expand the roster to fill the time available. The volume has good sets of maps for each locale. The cover illustration is a more or less contemporary painting but has nothing to do with this story.
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