Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is a disappointment not because it is poorly written but because it does not show the same improvement that the second showed over the first. In fact, I think it is at about the same level of the first, A PRESS OF CANVAS. What suffered in that one and this is not the actual writing, it is the story telling. It seems to wander along without much excitement and without getting much done. That is disappointing in that the second volume of the trilogy, A FINE TOPS'L BREEZE, did do a better job of story telling.
Even so, there is material of interest to be had here. Nautical fiction, especially of a naval bent, takes an American point of view all too rarely. Material concerning the War of 1812 is even more scarce. This book covers both of those issues from the point of view of Isaac Biggs, an American sailor pressed into the Royal Navy. He makes his escape in the first book, serves as a privateer on a rescue mission in the second and acts as the captain of a gunboat in a flotilla of such operating in the Chesapeake Bay during the closing days of the war in this one.
The descriptions of small boat operations has some interest as does the inclusion of such events as the burning of Washington and the writing of the Star Spangled Banner. The interest, however, does not translate into any drama.
This is a fair book for aficionados of the genre but is nothing special.
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