Rating: 
Summary: Great "Wooden Ships and Iron Men" fiction
Review:
This is another series recommended to me by my physician. The other one was the Patrick O'Brian series built around the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin. That series was great! The late Patrick O'Brian was a master story teller, and he knew his square riggers in detail. Hollywood just made a movie based on his first book in the series, Master and Commander.Alexander Kent is a pen name, and this series also holds great promise, judging from this book, Midshipman Bolitho, who was born in Falmouth, in Cornwall, and the story picks up in October, 1772. This book actually contains two stories, beginning with the 16-year-old Midshipman Richard Bolitho's assignment to the British 74 gun ship-of-the-line Gorgon, on a peacetime assignment to patrol the West African coast for pirates and slavers. Bolitho, who started his naval career at the age of 12, is a veteran, at 16, as the story starts and is already looking forward to his lieutenant's examination. He comes from a naval family, numbering a father who is a post captain, and a grandfather who was a rear admiral. His family's history is the cause of friction between him and his division lieutenant, a gouty, bad-tempered character named Tregorren. The second story is closer to Richard's home, in Cornwall, while he is on leave, and concerns smugglers and wreckers who lure ships on the rocks for their cargos in the dead of night. Altogether, the stories kept my interest to the end, with good suspense, lots of action, and great descriptions of nautical scenes, ship's maneuvers and good research into the period (end of the 18th century). Dialect and usages used in the dialogue rings true and are well done I intend to continue with the series, and have ordered the next two books in the series, Stand Into Danger and Gallant Company. I really enjoy these stories of wooden ships and iron men. I have some speaking acquiantance with the sea and sailing; I was in the merchant marine at the age of 16 myself, as a fireman on an 8,000 ton frieghter, joined the navy on my 17th birthday (from which I am retired), and built and sailed my own ketch, the Wild Goose, on the Pacific with my family. I love good sea stories, and grew up on Howard Pease's books about the merchant marine. He was largely responsible for my hitchhiking to San Francisco and shipping out at a tender age. This is a good series. I recommend it to you, if you love to read adventure stories about the sea and the men who go down to her in ships. Thanks again, Dr. John! Joseph (Joe) Pierre...
Rating:
Summary: Great "Wooden Ships and Iron Men" fiction
Review:
This is another series recommended to me by my physician. The other one was the Patrick O'Brian series built around the adventures of Captain Jack Aubrey and Dr. Stephen Maturin. That series was great! The late Patrick O'Brian was a master story teller, and he knew his square riggers in detail. Hollywood just made a movie based on his first book in the series, Master and Commander. Alexander Kent is a pen name, and this series also holds great promise, judging from this book, Midshipman Bolitho, who was born in Falmouth, in Cornwall, and the story picks up in October, 1772. This book actually contains two stories, beginning with the 16-year-old Midshipman Richard Bolitho's assignment to the British 74 gun ship-of-the-line Gorgon, on a peacetime assignment to patrol the West African coast for pirates and slavers. Bolitho, who started his naval career at the age of 12, is a veteran, at 16, as the story starts and is already looking forward to his lieutenant's examination. He comes from a naval family, numbering a father who is a post captain, and a grandfather who was a rear admiral. His family's history is the cause of friction between him and his division lieutenant, a gouty, bad-tempered character named Tregorren. The second story is closer to Richard's home, in Cornwall, while he is on leave, and concerns smugglers and wreckers who lure ships on the rocks for their cargos in the dead of night. Altogether, the stories kept my interest to the end, with good suspense, lots of action, and great descriptions of nautical scenes, ship's maneuvers and good research into the period (end of the 18th century). Dialect and usages used in the dialogue rings true and are well done I intend to continue with the series, and have ordered the next two books in the series, Stand Into Danger and Gallant Company. I really enjoy these stories of wooden ships and iron men. I have some speaking acquiantance with the sea and sailing; I was in the merchant marine at the age of 16 myself, as a fireman on an 8,000 ton frieghter, joined the navy on my 17th birthday (from which I am retired), and built and sailed my own ketch, the Wild Goose, on the Pacific with my family. I love good sea stories, and grew up on Howard Pease's books about the merchant marine. He was largely responsible for my hitchhiking to San Francisco and shipping out at a tender age. This is a good series. I recommend it to you, if you love to read adventure stories about the sea and the men who go down to her in ships. Thanks again, Dr. John! Joseph (Joe) Pierre...
Rating: 
Summary: Anchor's a-weigh
Review: First in a nautical series modeled on Forester's Hornblower, the action and settings are intriguing although the prose lags a bit, never catching the music of Forester. Really two "peacetime" stories, Bolitho is already an experienced midshipman (lowest officer) when he and his buddies invest a pirate island off Africa, and in the second tale hunt smugglers and a particularly canny "wrecker" luring vessels to a rocky doom on Cornwall's shore. One learns considerable of 18th century customs on land and sea, some of its morals, and hears several amusing dialects. I couldn't always visualize the ship handling. Among the second tier authors, Woodman's dour Drinkwater feels more authentic, but "Alexander Kent" provides a better read and one that would appeal to younger readers, given the more heroic than introspective Bol-LYE-tho, and his more modern sensitivities for his men. The cover painting by Geoffrey Huband has a darkly authentic look to it, but I didn't recognize the scene in the actual text.
Rating:
Summary: Anchor's a-weigh
Review: First in a nautical series modeled on Forester's Hornblower, the action and settings are intriguing although the prose lags a bit, never catching the music of Forester. Really two "peacetime" stories, Bolitho is already an experienced midshipman (lowest officer) when he and his buddies invest a pirate island off Africa, and in the second tale hunt smugglers and a particularly canny "wrecker" luring vessels to a rocky doom on Cornwall's shore. One learns considerable of 18th century customs on land and sea, some of its morals, and hears several amusing dialects. I couldn't always visualize the ship handling. Among the second tier authors, Woodman's dour Drinkwater feels more authentic, but "Alexander Kent" provides a better read and one that would appeal to younger readers, given the more heroic than introspective Bol-LYE-tho, and his more modern sensitivities for his men. The cover painting by Geoffrey Huband has a darkly authentic look to it, but I didn't recognize the scene in the actual text.
Rating:
Summary: A predictable, but enjoyable, read
Review: I read Forrester, O'Brien, Conrad, Mayrrat, and Melville, so I felt I should read Kent. He is not in the same category. He is an enjoyable read, don't get me wrong, but he telegraphs so much of his action that you see it long before it happens. Young Bolitho is a bit too self-conscious, a bit too able. Some characters are introduced only to provide a moment of bathos when they catch the number of their mess. Read it, if for no other reason than to see how much better Jack Aubrey and Horatio Hornblower are in comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Great Series
Review: Just finished a re-read of the Hornblower series & Parkinson's "biography". I'm about to embark on another reading of the Bolitho series, which I find has grown to 26 books. I first read Douglas Reeman well before he started the Bolitho series under a penname - great stuff. Reeman has his own web site with lists of all his books under both names. Another resource is Novels of Nelson's Navy, in conjunction with Amazon, http://www.cleverley.org/navy/index.html.
Rating:
Summary: Great Series
Review: Just finished a re-read of the Hornblower series & Parkinson's "biography". I'm about to embark on another reading of the Bolitho series, which I find has grown to 26 books. I first read Douglas Reeman well before he started the Bolitho series under a penname - great stuff. Reeman has his own web site with lists of all his books under both names. Another resource is Novels of Nelson's Navy, in conjunction with Amazon, http://www.cleverley.org/navy/index.html.
Rating: 
Summary: Well-crafted and highly enjoyable nautical fiction
Review: Midshipman Bolitho begins the saga of Richard Bolitho, heir to a proud familial naval tradition. This first book in the series is a compilation of two separately published works, both of which told stories of Bolitho's days as a midshipman, and as such this book reads like two unconnected novellas. While this could lead some to assume that this is a weak book, the truth is that Midshipman Bolitho is an engaging book, demonstrating strong storytelling with compelling characters and tight action sequences. Readers of historical fiction and the nautical genre will find much to enjoy in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Well-crafted and highly enjoyable nautical fiction
Review: Midshipman Bolitho begins the saga of Richard Bolitho, heir to a proud familial naval tradition. This first book in the series is a compilation of two separately published works, both of which told stories of Bolitho's days as a midshipman, and as such this book reads like two unconnected novellas. While this could lead some to assume that this is a weak book, the truth is that Midshipman Bolitho is an engaging book, demonstrating strong storytelling with compelling characters and tight action sequences. Readers of historical fiction and the nautical genre will find much to enjoy in this book.
Rating:
Summary: Still waiting for Hornblower's successor
Review: Not bad, much better than the detail-obsessed Patrick O'Brian. C.S. Forester still rules the seas of naval fiction. That said, this is the first Bolitho novel I've read and I intend to continue reading the series...
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