Kydd by Julian Stockwin -- A Review

Kydd by Julian Stockwin

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


After a long day at work in his family’s wig shop, Thomas Kydd sits in a pub, minding his own business. A press gang waltzes in. forever altering his path in life. He’s whisked aboard the Duke William, an old ship-of-the-line bound for Spithead where the Royal Navy fleet gathers before setting sail to wage war against France in 1793. Rated a landman, Thomas finds his life is no longer his own. It belongs to King George, and no one in this new domain cares whether he lives or dies. He is alone. He has no friends. He is totally out of his element. It is up to him alone to fit in, to find his way in an alien world, until one man, Joe Bowyer, takes him under his wing with a warning: stay a landman and remain mired in the anger and despondency overwhelming him, or pull himself out of the dregs to become a seaman.

Kydd takes Joe’s advice to heart and discovers he has a knack for sailing . . . if he survives. There are rumors that the captain is a Jonah. The ship leaks. Each day brings new trials: suicide, murder, piracy, treachery, battles on land fighting alongside French Royalists or at sea against Revolutionists, imprisonment, betrayal, desertion, menacing French privateers, and fire.

With the mastery of a virtuoso, Stockwin delivers a seamless tale that ensnares the reader in whatever Kydd sees, hears, feels, and experiences, be it a ferocious flogging, the depths of despair, men fomenting mutiny, or the brutality of war. Readers quickly find themselves transported back to the late eighteenth century. No punches are pulled. No incidents betray the readers’ sense of believability. Kydd is a deftly woven and riveting sea story that refuses to let go once the grappling hooks are thrown. When the last page is turned, readers yearn for the next book in the Kydd Sea Adventures.

(This review originally appeared at Pirates and Privateers: http://www.cindyvallar.com/Stockwin.h...)




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