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Loading... Mutinyby Julian Stockwin
![]() None No current Talk conversations about this book. I am a huge fan of historic nautical fiction particularly covering the period of the American and the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars. I have read and reread C.S. Forester, Patrick O’Brian, Alexander Kent and Dudley Pope. With Kydd (****) Julian Stockwin introduced a new take on the subject. It started detailing the live and times of a whig-maker pressed into the Royal Navy. Artemis (***’) the second book although the plot literally went all over (China, the South Sea, Cape Horn) captivated me to the end although it had a lot of loose ends. What happened with the English envoy they transported to China and what about the astronomers who were the reason for Artemis to venture in the South Seas? In Seaflower (***’) Kydd and Renzi - having lost their petty officer rating - are now in the Caribbean. After many an adventure, at the end Kydd is appointed a masters mate. In Mutiny for 40% of the book we follow Kydd from England to Gibraltar and to Venice and back (why did they have to pick up an English envoy in Venice and what happened with him afterwards?) then for half the book Kydd - a master’s mate - in a few pages is joining the mutineers and acting as the secretary of Richard Parker the President of the mutineers at the Nore. Interesting for maybe 20 pages but not for 200. Just prior to being condemned from mutiny Renzi is able to have him exonerated and pardoned. And then in the remaining 10% of the book we are at the Battle of Camperdown at the end of which Kydd is appointed … I’ll give it one star. I hope the next book is better. ( ![]() It is 1797 and Thomas Kydd is now master's mate on Achilles, a 64-gun ship-of-the-line, on his way back from the Caribbean. After a dangerous rescue mission to Venice Kydd sails for England, but his joy at returning home after many years' absence is soon forgotten when he finds himself at the centre of one of the most extraordinary events in English history - the Mutiny at the Nore. Ten thousand men, one thousand guns and scores of ships hold the country to ransom: the government is near collapse; the economy on the brink of ruin. And Kydd is faced with a terrible choice. Abandon his friends and shipmates? Or join the rebellion and put his career - and even his life - on the line? no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesKydd (4)
The year is 1797. Kydd has been at sea four long, hard years, ever since he was pressed into service. Despite that inauspicious start to his naval career, he has learned to love his life aboard ship. It's in his blood. It's in his soul. Having now risen to the rate of master's mate, Kydd volunteers to join the crew of the frigate Bacchante in a mission to rescue a British diplomat mired in the hostilities of Napoleon's siege of Venice. The city is surrounded. It will soon fall to Napoleon, and the diplomat will be trapped unless Kydd and the men from Bacchante can help him escape. Stockwin's rousing narrative follows Kydd and his mysterious seafaring mate Nicholas Renzi across the Mediterranean to a rendezvous with danger, and then back toward an even greater challenge -- a harrowing fleet mutiny. As the king's loyal servant, Kydd must decide whether to join his shipmates in their uprising. The cause is just -- sailors' pay has not been raised for a century and a half! But to mutiny is to commit the ultimate treason against king and country. Will Kydd honour his pledge to his sovereign lord, or will he stand by his friends? Kydd faces the most difficult decision of his life in this richly nuanced novel from a master storyteller whose naval expertise and love for the sea shine through on every page. No library descriptions found. |
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![]() GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)823.92Literature English & Old English literatures English fiction Modern Period 2000-LC ClassificationRatingAverage:![]()
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