Alxeander Kent's Bolitho novels is yet another series set in the Age of Sail, set around the Napoleonic wars and the American Revolution. Instead of focusing on the major battles like most of his colleagues, Kent sends his hero, Richard Bolitho to those lesser know but theaters of war bringing the reader a little wider view of conflicts of the period not normally seen in these period pieces. Unfortunately thats about the best I can say of this series. This work is not so much historical fiction as historical melodrama.
As the stories follow young Bolitho from Midshipman to Admiral, the character totally fails to develop any additional depth or show any signs of change other than the title before his name. Time and again we are told of Bolitho's charisma and his inspiring leadership, which is a good thing since we would never know it from the actions of the character himself. Kent portrays Bolitho as a somewhat distorted mirror of Nelson, often making comparison between the two and having Bolitho follows in his footsteps both in his career and his social life, with the primary focus being on the social life.
With a lot of other historical fiction of this period you can usually at least count on some good history. Not here, the war itself is more of backdrop to the melodrama being played out by the characters. There is more attention paid to the social and emotional affairs of Bolitho than to the events in the world. They are almost portrayed as merely an inconvenience to their otherwise busy lives.
Occaionaly mention of major historic events are made just to remind the reader that there are major events unfolding in the world. Even the descriptions of the battles are more done as more hand wave to period. A few repeates of "On the Uproll", "As you bear, Fire!" followed by "Stop you vents, Sponge Out, Load, Run Out" and repeat. Little is made of tactics and the technical side of ship handling is summed up by the repeating of the lines "Main the braces", "Put helm down" and "Main sail haul" I often found myself wondering this is a result of cut and paste or a keyboard macro, either way it gets very tiring to read.
If you like stories of this period go read Foster, Pope or O'Brian
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