Written by: Arthur Herman
Submitted By: Darko Matijas
With great anticipation I purchased a book that was recomMended by one Saul David, and I must say, it was money well spent, even with all the misgivings taken into account.
The magnificence of Herman's storytelling kept me awake for nights on, for, instead of bombarding a reader with dry facts, the author had skillfully introduced many anecdotes in all the right places, without ever interrupting the pace and the steady flow of the story. Few of us, I believe, have ever had a faintest idea of how interconnected the lives of great characters of British naval history were, including there the unlikely relations between the famous and the infamous, such as the ones between the buccaneer Henry Morgan and admiral George Monck, or the one of William Bligh and James Cook.
However, with all the vast research conducted, one cannot but wonder had Mr. Herman not skipped a class or two in the history of the world outside of British borders, for on occasions there are some quite doubtful, if not utterly wrong qualifications. For example, the Emperor Constantine I "the Great" was actually not born in the Roman province of Britain, in spite of what the author says. His thoughts on France during the Revolution and that at the age of Louis XIV are quite debatable too, to say the least, since a reader with a certain knowledge of history gets a strange sense of a "goodie and a villain" story behind it, at least for a book written by a renowned historian.
Still, Arthur Herman's patriotism never comes under doubt, and whoever had enjoyed the Sharpe and (especially) Hornblower novels as much as I did will have a wonderful time reading this book, although I would suggest it should be taken in the same manner - as a historical novel with a lot of true facts, and with some which are not.
