By now it is on the level of the Aubrey-Maturin books...
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This is the eight book in the saga... and as usual with sagas they will either go down or up...
Believe my word if you please... this one is definitely GOING UP!.
From the first chapter you understand this is a better approach, secondaries (which in fact are NOT at all secondaries characters anymore... as it showed in the last "India" book...) really have DEPTH... flesh and bone characters all the way in the best tradition of a saga of this potential, and the "baddies" (a neglected often subject in other works) are true to life.
Never has Jack been so human.
I must confess I bought and read the five first books BECAUSE they were framed in the Crimean War (a favorite wargaming period of mine), was slightly disappointed with the first installment in India... and then the saga got a new impulse with THE ROGUE OFFICER which is also very good... and I think has reached it's peak with the present one.
The tapestry is there. Lovelace, King, Wynter, Gwilliams and the Maori characters are better rendered then ever before... but also army and navy ways... command structures... and a lot more.
I can say it is a page turner and savory at the same time and for 218 pages you can not get a better read nowadays in the field of military related historical fiction.
My thanks to Major John Spies for suggesting the author this new setting for his adventures... I think readers of "Britain's Forgotten Wars" by Ian Hernon (Paperback - 15 Jan 2003) are in for a guess for the new post of Fancy Jack.
Well Done. By now in a class of it's own.
ADB
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