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Rating: 
Summary: Slow going at the start
Review: Being a big fan of DL and Alan Lewrie, I rushed out and got this book the minute it was released. But, after wading through the first 50 pages or so, I put it down _ nothing was happening, and my old friend Alan was a bit boring. Now, many months later, I've picked the book up again. I don't enjoy it as much as the first couple of Lewrie books and, I'm sorry to say, the Balkans just don't interest me _ pirates or no pirates. Still, I'm finding Lewrie better company with my second attempt. I just wish Lambdin would tone down the "accents" he has his characters speak in. His attempts at pidgin English with a foreign accent are virtually incomprehensible. That said, I am looking forward to getting my hands on "King's Captain".
Rating:
Summary: Jester?s Fortune a big disappointment
Review: I am a HUGE Dewey Lambdin fan, own all his books, and even hunted down out-of-print copies for my library a few years back before they all became available. But I found Jester's Fortune to be a big disappointment. The setting and location are interesting, and as usual Mr. Lambdin has done his homework on the history. But almost nothing happens in the first 280 pages! The last 80 pages are typical of both Lambdin and Lewrie, and were fun and exciting. But it took me almost a month to wade through the first 280, as it never held my interest.Still, if you've read the rest of the series, you'll want to read this too. (Is that faint enough praise?) Three stars ONLY because the ending was good. Otherwise two.
Rating: 
Summary: Lambdin/Lewrie have done it again!
Review: I have just finished Jester's Fortune. It is typical Alan Lewrie stuff, except that he somehow avoids any signifcant female interation. For Alan Lewrie, this is more than a change, it is bizarre. In this regard, I liked the old Lewrie better. I hope this is a one time hiatus. Other than that it was GREAT. A visit to the history of the Balkins and how they got so screwed up that they are still killing each other today!!!! It was either excellent timing or stupendous coincidence. In any case, you learn much, certainly more than you will ever learn from a newspaper, about why there is such a mess in the Balkins, and why there is no real reason to hope that it will improve. AND our hero Alan Lewrie is right in the middle of the history making!!!! Alan's "friend" Napolean Bonaparte is unleashed on the world and the world will never be the same. Great story superbly told.
Rating:
Summary: Jester's Fortune
Review: It's an interesting story, along with his other novels, tho a bit gruesome towards the end. One problem i have with his books is that the foreigners speak their languages very ungrammatically! I can understand how an English sailor could mess up even French, but a Frenchman? This is very grating and there's no excuse for it. I even noticed a mistake in German, and my German is almost non-existent. My second beef is that his sailing talk is totally unintelligible. I don't understand C.S.Forester either, but he seems only to have the necessary minimum. When Lambdin talks about relative wind he's obviously 'going overboard'.
Rating:
Summary: Shows the Balkan problems are nothing new...
Review: Like Dewey Lambdin's previous books, this tale takes British Naval Commander Alan Lewrie into an area seldom covered by other novels related to this historical period. Commander Lewrie takes Jester into the Adriatic as part of a naval squadron sent to intercept French trade. The book provides a good account of the situation, including the troubles between ethnic and religious groups in the area. The present troubles in the Balkans are taken back 200 years, with the Serbs as the villains, and background material on some of the origins. With graphic descriptions of atrocities, this is not a children's book. The account is interspersed with details of Napoleon's campaigns in Italy and his rise to power. An old love of Lewrie's reappears, along with a couple of old school chums from Harrow, and a new woman leads him into temptation while he is far from home and family.
Rating: 
Summary: Jester's Fortune
Review: This is a strange, strange book. Or perhaps it's a very bad one. I felt mystified by it, but, on balance, I'm leaning toward "bad". Lambdin appears to be a stylistic and grammatical "wolf-child". He breaks every rule with apparent innocence. Literally ungrammatical sentences wander, going nowhere. Exclamation points pepper the text. Dialogue is phrased in spelled-out dialect, occasionally vivid but far more often twee. Anything that can possibly be seen as jargon gets capitalized and hyphenated in the best tradition of bad military fiction. Characterization here seems shallow. Alan Lewrie, the hero, is presented as "different": a sort of a renegade womanizing rogue-cop kind of guy. Really, though, he comes across as a rather shallow individual. The constant locker-room banter between the characters seems highly improbable for the late 18th century setting, and while the promiscuity of all characters may be period, at least for the men, the coldness with which they pursue it is off-putting. Even more off-putting is the fact that no female character here is more than a bit of fluff, of significance only for her attractiveness to men. The setting, the Balkan Adriatic and Venice, is fascinating. The plot seems exciting, but upon reflection, represents a rather obvious attempt to be timely. Trying to raid French shipping, Lewrie and the squadron he's part of enlist the help of Serbian pirates. The pirates proceed to establish a death camp and begin torturing and killing their enemies. The parallel to recent Balkan events is heavy-handed, and the Serbs are presented as rather subhuman. There are enjoyable moments in the plot, such as when the Hungarian aide whom Lewrie has dismissed as effeminate turns out to be a fantastic swordsman, but overall, I'd give this a miss.
Rating: 
Summary: A hopefully temporary down-turn in the series
Review: This is the eighth novel in the "Alan Lewrie" Royal Navy series set during the Napoleonic wars, and we're up to 1796 and the beginnings of Bonaparte's conquest of most of Western Europe. The dashing and rakehell Lewie is in his early 30s now, has attained the rank of commander, and is beginning to mellow just a little as he gains experience and responsibility -- and children. Admiral Sir John Jervis, one of the most cold-blooded disciplinarians the Royal Navy ever produced but an excellent theatre commander, has been given the responsibility of cutting the French off at the knees in the Mediterranean. But the Coalition is falling apart and Great Britain is becoming isolated, the Austrian army -- supposedly "the greatest army in Europe" -- has turned out a paper tiger, and the Venetian Republic just can't be bothered to save itself. Jervis has created a small squadron to work the Adriatic, led by Capt. Thomas Charlton and including a second frigate under Capt. Benjamin Rodgers (whom Lewrie knew in the Bahamas). And there's another sloop under an aristocratic little pissant named Fillebrowne who is likely to be a burr under Lewrie's saddle for some time to come. The author takes the opportunity to display the nature of Venetian and Austro-Hungarian decadence (compared to the English Way, at any rate) and to let the reader share his intense, dramatically demonstrated disdain for anything to do with the Balkans and the region's long, long history of ethnic cleansing, religious intolerance, and tendency to torture as a tool of revenge. (Kossovo's prominence in the news didn't begin in the 1990s.) My favorite character in the book, though, is the Hungarian Lieut. Kolodzcy, seconded to the squadron as a translator and political advisor, and who turns out to be quite different from Lewrie's and Rodgers's first impression. This one is talkier than most, except for the horrific scene at the pirate encampment near the end, but I enjoyed the Brits' attempts to deal with the original of Byzantine politics.
Rating:
Summary: A hopefully temporary down-turn in the series
Review: This is the eighth novel in the "Alan Lewrie" Royal Navy series set during the Napoleonic wars, and we're up to 1796 and the beginnings of Bonaparte's conquest of most of Western Europe. The dashing and rakehell Lewie is in his early 30s now, has attained the rank of commander, and is beginning to mellow just a little as he gains experience and responsibility -- and children. Admiral Sir John Jervis, one of the most cold-blooded disciplinarians the Royal Navy ever produced but an excellent theatre commander, has been given the responsibility of cutting the French off at the knees in the Mediterranean. But the Coalition is falling apart and Great Britain is becoming isolated, the Austrian army -- supposedly "the greatest army in Europe" -- has turned out a paper tiger, and the Venetian Republic just can't be bothered to save itself. Jervis has created a small squadron to work the Adriatic, led by Capt. Thomas Charlton and including a second frigate under Capt. Benjamin Rodgers (whom Lewrie knew in the Bahamas). And there's another sloop under an aristocratic little pissant named Fillebrowne who is likely to be a burr under Lewrie's saddle for some time to come. The author takes the opportunity to display the nature of Venetian and Austro-Hungarian decadence (compared to the English Way, at any rate) and to let the reader share his intense, dramatically demonstrated disdain for anything to do with the Balkans and the region's long, long history of ethnic cleansing, religious intolerance, and tendency to torture as a tool of revenge. (Kossovo's prominence in the news didn't begin in the 1990s.) My favorite character in the book, though, is the Hungarian Lieut. Kolodzcy, seconded to the squadron as a translator and political advisor, and who turns out to be quite different from Lewrie's and Rodgers's first impression. This one is talkier than most, except for the horrific scene at the pirate encampment near the end, but I enjoyed the Brits' attempts to deal with the original of Byzantine politics.
Rating:
Summary: Nother hit
Review: Well done, sir. I can still hear the sounds of the sea, and the hearty swabies. Lambdin does it again! I cannot understand why Dewey does not have the fame that other sea authors have. Perhaps he hasn't done enough book tours! His books are problematic. Does one stay up till 3 in the AM to go with the action, or does one read a chapter at a time to savor the flavor and make it last a bit longer. A frustratin' turn of events. The only help is for DL to finish another quick...
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