Review of No Quarter: Dominium by MJL Evans and GM O’Connor
Avast, mateys! We’re taking a short stroll through seventeenth century Port Royal in the Caribbean, where pirates and slave traders still hold sway. Batten down the hatches for a turbulent voyage!
In this first installment of a multi-novella series, we follow Atria — a fiery red-haired Irish woman — as she is shipwrecked with her sister in the swashbuckling coastal town of Port Royal.
Her troubles only increase as she is captured by ill-bred white slavers. Then, to really top things off, she’s offered as a prize in a card game. But wait — the book’s unlikely hero Gator Gar appears in the nick of time, and a romance is begun.
Along the way, the novella is strewn with many memorable characters, like Dr. Sander Strangeways, who brings a modicum of comic relief. In one passage, his nurse berates him for giving away the last of the laudanum.
“The doctor flushed. ‘Another fisherman lost an eye. I had to give him something. Besides, I didn’t know a hurricane was coming. Hurricane prediction is not listed on the sign.'”
And, then, there’s Judge Harold Goblet, who was “no more than four and a half feet tall, terribly stout, with a round head and big lips that gave the impression that he was perpetually pouting.”
Other minor characters abound in this richly drawn depiction of daily life in circa-1689 Port Royal, and the author describes both characters and surroundings with practiced ease. Indeed, at times it reads much more like a historical treatise than an action romance, one of the few failings I found with the book.
On the whole, No Quarter Dominium is a fine effort that just needs a little editing to clear up the often jagged continuity and the anachronistic language (some of the dialogue doesn’t ring true for the period).
I give the novella four stars and applaud the ambitious efforts of the two co-authors.
