Pirate Code, by Helen Hollick - Sea Witch Chronicles

 
Pirate Code

Helen Hollick

Sea Witch Chronicles

The second in the Jesamiah Acorne series continues the the story of this Jack Sparrow-esque pirate and his white which beloved, Tiola, soon after their reunion aboard the Sea Witch in the first novel, also called Sea Witch. I enjoyed the first in the series mainly for the chance to meet and get to know these engaging characters, but the second is a much better crafted novel, with a taut construction and more insights into what makes Jesamiah tick.

Back at Nassau, Jesamiah is tricked into going pirate again. Convinced by the sea goddess's daughter, Rain, he believes that Tiola, left behind, no longer wants him. He decides to set off on his own with the crew and Sea Witch to find a treasure he has been told is hidden in Hispaniola. The trouble is that England and Spain are at war, so if Jesamiah's detractors don't have enough to send them after him to destroy him, they have it now. He meets a gorgeous redhead named Francesca whose questionable character gives him lots of conflicts, while he gets mixed up with rebels, nuns, and an evil dictator, making for a complex and engrossing story.

One thing that really impressed me about this book is its expert but not-at-all intrusive use of nautical terms. Hollick brings them in to the story just exactly as much as she needs to to authenticate the characters of the seaman and pirates, but one does not feel lectured or clubbed over the head with them.. She provides a glossary to enrich the reader's understanding.

Her handling as well of certain revelations about Jesamiah's past appear at one point to be following formula, but then cleverly you learn something new, quite original and as a result, far more meaningful.

I would like to have seen more of Tiola in Pirate Code, but got every bit as much of Jesamiah as I could want. Any questions I had while reading about the purpose of seemingly extraneous scenes were resolved by reading further. I would like to have had the ultimate crisis vary more from the same in the first novel, but this did not take away from a jolly good yarn.

My one serious quibble with this otherwise delightful novel is its insistence on portraying fat people as foolish or evil. This is an unfortunate stereotype in our societies that does not seem to want to go away. Of course, not all the "bad guys" are fat, but all the fat guys are either bad or stupid. More than that, their fatness is used in descriptions intended to enforce just how bad or foolish they are. El Gardo is shown after sex as having a belly "extended like an eight months pregnant woman" whereas I doubt she would have focused so on the thinness of another character. Character Jasper insists on calling him "El Gordo", Spanish for “fat”. Jesamiah puts his dagger to the "double chins" of one of El Gardo's lackeys. Two other characters that are both fat are unlovingly portrayed as such. I would like to see Hollick think twice about these stigma-laden portrayals in future books.

I read the authors' historical notes in novels with relish, and I loved Hollick's "admission" that this one was not enslaved to historical record. Sometimes we want to relax and enjoy and not count the rivets on the hull of the Titanic. It was refreshing.

As usual Hollick has provided the reader with characters that are fun but also flawed enough to stay interesting. The tale of seafaring is so real you might think Hollick has had a life under the Jolly Roger herself. You will come to want more of this lovable rogue, just as I have.

The author and publisher provided me with a digital copy of Pirate Code in exchange for this review. I read the PDF on m y Kindle 2.

New! Medieval Literature from Oxford University Press

Please find below information about new books from Oxford
University Press publishing in this subject.

The Familiar Enem
Chaucer, Language, and Nation in the Hundred Years War
Ardis Butterfield

The Familiar Enemy examines the linguistic, literary, and cultural identities of England and France during the Hundred Years War. It explores works by Deschamps, Charles d'Orléans, and Gower, as well as Chaucer who, the book argues, must be resituated within the context of the multilingual cultural geography of medieval Europe.


Hardback
476 pages

£60.00
10 December 2009
978-0-19-957486-5

More details and ordering information:
http://academic-marketing.oup.com/c/176kk7qAz9q2C84vx

Anglo-Saxon/Irish Relations before the Vikings
Edited by James Graham-Campbell and Michael Ryan

Hardback | 400 pages | 24 December 2009

More details and ordering information:
http://academic-marketing.oup.com/c/176kmpDLspgSU10zY

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Marketing Services Department,
Oxford University Press,
Great Clarendon Street,
Oxford OX2 6DP, UK

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River God, by Wilbur Smith

River God

Wilbur Smith

Taita is a slave with a difference.  he is talented, inventive, brilliant, deboted, and unwilling to be freed.  To be free he would have to give up his service to his mistress, so he would rather never be free.

The era is a time in Ancient Egypt when the kingdom is divided into two parts, an Upper Kingdom, where Taita and his mistress and the rest live, and Lower Kingdom, where a usurper holds the throne.  He does not hold it long in this novel, as this is also a time in history when another nation, the Hyksos, are about to overrun both Upper and Lower. How Taita changes technology and therefore the balance of power is the theme of the novel.

The story starts with the Grand Vizier Intef's daughter wanting to marry Tanus, the son of Intef's greatest enemy.  No matter what Taita the slave does, this is not going to happen, and the daughter, Lostris, winds up marrying Pharaoh instead.  Their union is not fruitful until Tanus and she get some alone time.  One of the sad aspects of the story is that even after Pharoah dies, Lostris and Tanus cannot reveal their love nor can their three children be revealed as anyone's issue but Pharoah's.  This is in spite of the fact that Tanus is a lion of a man and much loved both by the army and the people.  Much of the novel is about the incursions by the Hyksos and the court's exile to lands beyond the Nile's great cataracts.  It is an involving story full of excitement  and compelling characters.

If you ever read Jean M. Auel's Valley of the Horses,  you will know what I mean when I say that Aula and Taita bould start their own R&D company.  I used to say about her that she invented everything but the blender.  Taita is quite the same, but in both cases the characters are credible as innovators, to a point.  Taita has developed a "Nilometer", for instance, that helps him gauge how high the Nile will get during its annual floods.  In the decades long timespan of the novel he manages to invent the spoke wheel, to domesticate horses, to discern the elements of epidemiiology, even to develop beterinary tracheotomies.  It gets a little stretched at times.

There were a couple times when I thought Smith was interpreting the cultures of the other nations around Egypt in terms of later Islamic cultures.  Taita takes some getting used to, his ego being more than a little insufferable.  ostly what this book suffered from in my case is not Smith's fault at all.  The Brilliance Audio production was laughable in places.  Pharoah sounded like Kirk Douglas, and iit was almost too much when I realized Tanus was a vocal dead ringer for "Duff man" on The Simpsons.  It is a testament to Smith's writing that this unappealing fact did not prevent me from loving the character of Tanus.  I recommend you read the print format or find a different audio production.

This book is scheduled for discussion on Let's Read Historical Novels on February 2, 2010.

Sharpe's Battle, by Bernard Cornwell

Sharpe's Battle
Bernard Cornwell

Richard Sharpe Adventure Series

Sharpe's Battle  is really three stories with an underpinning of Sharpe's usual daring blunder that nearly gets him kicked out of the army.  It starts as Sharpe summarily executes two French officers found raping a young girl.  The act earns him the double enmity of Loup, a flamboyant commander of the French Wolf Pack, who will pursue a bendetta against Sharpe that results in a terrible defeat for Our Hero and lands him in trouble with the British Command.  The second plot involves Hogan palming off the Spanish King's Irish Guard on Sharpe with the order that he make them miserable so they desert and are no longer the potential liability they are perceived ro be.  Sharpe comes to admire the Guard though not their commander, Lord Kiley.  They, along with a crack Portuguese company, come under attack at San Isidro by Loup and the Pack.  The virtual massacre of the Portuguese troops and Sharpe's confession to severl unfriendly people that he executed Loup's men and therefore is likely to draw an attack by Loup is what starts another officer and him on the road to courtmartial.  Lord Kiley has a Spanish mistress whhom we already know by this time is a spy of the French.  Sharpe, on administrative duty, nevertheless is able to apply the Guard and his own Chosen men in a battle the French are almost sure to win.  And you know how those things turn out.

The novel is truly about four men besides our ever-loving rifleman.

Loup:  Loup is the commander of the French Wolf Pack, assigned by Napoleon to eradicate the Spanish guerilla resistance.  He comes across Sharpe just as he is ordering the battlefield execution of two of Loup's officesr, and the personal vendetta that follows from this act causes Loup to attack the garrison at San Isidro that gets Sharpe in deep merd with Hogan and Wellignton. He is also the lover of the uniform collecting Spanish adventuress, Dona Juanita, ostensibly Kiley's fiancee.

Lord Kiley:  His lordship is the son of Lady Kiley, an ex-patriate Irish rebel and all around harridan.  He is the commander of the King's Irish Guard, a fictional company of "Wild Geese" or Irish rebels who fled one of the several rebellions against British rule as well as their descendants libing in Spain.  If you are expecting the dashing Lord Kiley of the movie, Sharpe's Battle,  I am afraid you will be disappointed.  Prideful and bitter, this is quite another fellow.

Father Sarsfield: The priest of the King's Irish Guard, Sarsfield is agreeable and wise, and gains Sharpe's regard, making later events that much more perplexing for Our Hero.  Sarsfield presents an opportunity for Hogan to explain why a loyal Irishman is fighting for Britain.

"General" Runciman:  Insisting he is still technically the Wagonmaster General, this fellow appears at first to be a buffoon.  He admits he is no soldier.  He is resigned to being the scapegoat for British-Spanish political squabbling, but Runciman grows during the development of the three main plots and proves himself Sharpe's faithful friend in the end.

And let's not forget Dona Juanita.  A Diana-like figure, she is famous for collecting a uniform for each officer she beds.  We meet Ducos, a regular thorn in Sharpe's side from hereon in through Sharpe's Revenge, a special operative of Napoleon's who has plans for Juanita and her Irish lover.  I don't know what this says about the book, but near the end we learn that Sharpe and Juanita had some private liaison that frankly neither of us reading the book recalled.   One of Juanita's assignments is to sow discord among the large Irish contingent in the British army with newspapers describing British atrocities back home in Ireland.  It wouldn't take much, since the British character in its occupation of Ireland certainly fit the bill.   But I digress.

This novel unfortunately shows the dangers of writing a series that, first of all, is being made into movies at the same time, movies that change the story in most instances, and second, suffers from discontinuity as a result of novels written out of order.  Early in the novel the author states that Sharpe h ad never seen a massacre of children, but we know that he did so in Sharpe's Gold.  Sharpe's Battle  has more than its share of gruesome battle scenes, but during the later battle for the village, Cornwell suddenly waxes quite poetic.  For instance, he describes the strata of colors of the uniforms of each succeeding pile of the dead along the billage streets that collect as one side occupies, then the other, then the first again, with alternating carnage.  I admired the prose but it was also rather out of place.

Finally, whether you wonder at the disjointed story line or revel in three plots for the price of one is your call.   The plots are each complex and well thought out.  You will certainly be entertained.

Use the links on the right to discover what formats Sharpe's Battle   is available in.

Now on to Sharpe's Company!

New Release: The Highest Stakes, by Emery Lee

The Highest Stakes

Emery Lee

In storres April 2010

All thoroughbred horses in the world to this very day can trace their blood back to three specific Arabian stallions imported to England in the early part of the 18th century. Against this backdrop comes a painstakingly researched novel with breathtaking scenes of real races, real horses, glimpses of the men who cared for them, and the tensions of those who owned and controlled them.

In 18th century England and Colonial Virginia, when high-spirited stallions filled the stables of the lords of the land and fortunes were won and lost on the outcome of a race, a love story unfolds between a young woman for whom her uncle's horses are her only friends and the young man who teaches her everything about their care and racing. When she's forced into marriage, his only hope of winning her back is to race his horse to reclaim all that was stolen from him—his land, his dignity, and his love.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Emery Lee is a life-long equestrienne, a history buff, and a born romantic. Combine the three and you have the essence of her debut novel: a tale of love, war, politics, and horseracing. A member of Romance Writers of America, she lives with her husband, sons, and two horses in upstate South Carolina. For more information, please visit http://authoremerylee.com/  .

New Release: The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century

by Ian Mortimer

“Chock-full of surprises, this is exceptional social history, compellingly told; there should be "travel books" like this for every century. Start reading and you won't want to stop.” — Library Journal (starred review)

“Lose yourself in the absolutely absorbing pages of this time-travel space capsule... a gem for history buffs as well as travelers.” —Booklist

“Easy to read; abounds with useful information.” — Renaissance Magazine

“Imagine yourself in a dusty London street on a [medieval] summer morning. A servant opens an upstairs shutter and starts beating a blanket. A dog guarding a traveler’s packhorses starts barking. Nearby traders call out from their market stalls … And you, in the middle of all this, where are you going to stay tonight? What are you wearing? What are you going to eat?”

The fourteenth century, the heart of the Middle Ages, is much more than the popular imagining of jousts and chivalry. The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century (Touchstone; January 5, 2010; $26/cloth) by Ian Mortimer Ph.D., guides readers through the daily sights, sounds, smells, and tastes of England in the Middle Ages, hundreds of years before electricity, indoor plumbing, and modern medicine.

By putting the reader in the starring role, Mortimer provides a uniquely empathetic, full-sensory experience that has already won the book critical acclaim. The inhabitants of this intriguing era come alive not just as names and dates on a page, but through their humanity– their hopes and fears and the drama of their day-to-day existence.

Through the use of chronicles, letters, household accounts, and poems, Mortimer has created a literary time machine, providing answers to questions typically ignored by traditional histories. For instance, readers will learn how to greet people on the street, what to use as toilet paper, and why a physician might want to taste their blood. They’ll experience everything from the brutality of war to the haute couture of the day.

From the first step on the road to Exeter with the smells of Shitbrook in the air, through meals of roast beaver and puffin, the lives of serf, merchant, and aristocrat alike are illuminated with remarkable detail in an engaging literary journey back in time. The result is an engrossing social history that is revolutionary in its concept, informative and entertaining in its detail, and startling for its portrayal of humanity in an age of violence, exuberance, and fear.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Ian Mortimer is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and was awarded the Alexander Prize in 2004 for his work on the social history of medicine. He holds a Ph.D. in history and has penned four medieval biographies in addition to The Time Traveler’s Guide to Medieval England, most recently 1415: Henry V’s Year of Glory. He has also worked for several archive and historical research organizations in the UK, where he lives with his wife and children.


THE TIME TRAVELER’S GUIDE TO MEDIEVAL ENGLANDA Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century
By Ian Mortimer
Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Publication Date: January 5, 2010
ISBN: 1-4391-1289-4
$26/cloth

For more information on THE TIME TRAVELER’S GUIDE please visit:
http://www.ianmortimer.com%20or%20www.simonandschuster.com/

Bluebells of Scotland, by Laura Vosika

Blue Bells of Scotland: Blue Bells Trilogy: Book OneLaura Vosika

Blue Bells of Scotland is a thoroughly engrossing time travel story that promises to continue as vividly as it started.  Two men, one in present day and one in 1314, fall asleep in the same spot in a castle near Inverness, Scotland.  What ensues is a multilayered story of growth and redemption with a stunning conclusion at the famous battle of Bannockburn in June 1314.

Shawn is an arrogant, reckless, and often heartless headliner in an American classical orchestra touring Scotland.  Niall is the future laird of the castle where each falls asleep with the scent of bluebells in his nostrils.  Niall appears to be the smarter, more adaptable of the two, figuring out first where he is and how to pass for Shawn, his look-alike.  Shawn on the other hand is convinced he has been kidnapped by historical reenactors gone too far, and he makes mistake after mistake but nevertheless manages to stay alive while traitors and English soldiers hunt him. It is clear that some force has made the switch so that each man can affect some change in events or their own lives.  This is the story then, if and how each man accomplishes what he must.

I found only one significant problem in this otherwise fascinating novel.  The bulk of the story switches back and forth between the two men in their respective temporal exile.  The trouble is that the time elapsed does not always seem to sync.  Vosika also throws in a new observer  in the person of a man Shawn cheated before he, well, leaped.  This diversion was, I felt, unnecessary, as the police could have told Niall about the incident, and it further confused the timeline for me.

Now, however, I get to talk about everything else that was right about this work of heart, and there is so much.  The characters, including the two protagonists, and the people from each of their worlds, are complex, well drawn, distinct  and draw your concern or whatever other emotion.  I can't say whether I was supposed to like the love interest in the present, a vcilonist named Amy, but I did not.  She is such a doormat that I wanted to scream at her much of the time as I was reading.  But that's not an error, just an interpretation on my part.  The story is credible and full of nuance.You see the two men changing when faced with unfamiliar stressors.  There is ample cause for tension in either man's experience, Shawn having to face mortal danger without the fighting skills Niall was taught, and Niall having to fit into a future full of seductive comforts while also livbing up to Shawn's musical genius.

Vosika has a particular gift with visuals.  Each time I came to one of these bits of exquisite imagery I stopped and savored it.  A lemon slice swirls lazily in a glass of icewater.  A bar of light appears in the darkness when Amy opens to door to the outside.  Fog wraps around Niall's ankles like purring cats.

A couple of other things I particularly enjoyed.  Throughout the story historical reenactment is a theme.  It never seems in the least forced.    In fact, it is so integral a part of the climactic sequence that it amplifies the tension of the scenes tremendously.  Other factors that clicked well with me were the images of twins, the hints about the past from folk songs and the loving and expert use of music  throughout the tale, and finally the plausibility of the story of how times might influence each other.

The author gave me a digital copy to read for this review.  It is as far as I know available only in print.  I am encouraging the author to make the book accessible to print impaired readers.  I will most definitely purchase and read the sequels.