Sunday, October 8, 2017

My Review of "When The Mermaid Sings"



A Reader’s Pure Joy 

  


Having read and truly enjoyed Helen Hollick’s “Sea Witch Voyages,” I was happy to find out more about that charming rascal, Jesamiah Acorne. Was I ever surprised to read where this seemingly English lad had spent his miserable young years [and, no, I am not going to ruin this great story by telling you].


With trepidation, we follow the fifteen-year old’s escape to sea. If his life on land had been miserable and hard, in 1708 life at sea proves even harder. Young Jesamiah soon learns about the drink, the stink and the whoring. He discovers that his volatile captain and the salt-hardened crew are attacking French and Spanish merchant ships throughout the Caribbean. Any smidgen of conscience is eased by Queen Anne’s “Letter of Marque,” giving them royal leave to plunder as it declares them to be honorable privateers in her war against Spain and her allies; when truth be told, their lust for plunder soon turns them into murdering pirates.


Jesamiah, the ship’s boy, grows into Jesamiah, the man (ahem, Pirate). There is foreboding of an intriguing Cornish girl, Tiola, appearing in his dreams. In the later Sea Witch novels, it is she who becomes the rival to Jesamiah’s great love, the sea. And, of course, there is the Mermaid, who tries to lure young Jesamiah into her watery realm with her sweet siren song.


This short prequel to “The Sea Witch Voyages” was made doubly enjoyable for me by the author’s usage of language; spot-on for the time. (And I don’t mean salty language although - leave it to this hat-wearing lady – she can swear like any rum-soaked pirate when the occasion calls for it.) The interwoven descriptions of snapping topgallants, slick ratlines, and belaying-pins and other nautical terms correctly fit those complex old sailing ships on which one false step meant certain death.

You’ve got to love Jesamiah and, you've got to get this novella. It's only 99c (or 99p in Britain).

Also, check out Helen Hollick's interesting blogs:





Friday, October 6, 2017

My Review of Sons of My Fathers



Sons of My Fathers by Michael A. Simpson is based on the author’s own family history and reads almost like a biography. However, I assume that attributes to its characters’ are as the author imagines them and, hence, are fictional in detail; but what great writing bringing this saga alive for the reader.

The cover of a denuded tree strangled by sabotaged lengths of railroad tracks is haunting.

The book begins during 1864, the American Civil War. Baylis Simpson and his family eke out a meager living as sharecroppers in Georgia which, of course, backed the Confederacy. As in all wars, the atrocities play out not only on the battlefield but split this fertile land and its families asunder with obscene travesties against humankind. Baylis Simpson sees his family destroyed. As he and his kin vow vengeance against the murderous rabble taking property and lives that had escaped the Union Army, the Simpsons are caught between the warring lines.

One hundred years later, Baylis’s descendent, young Ron Simpson, becomes a U.S. Army helicopter pilot. He volunteers to serve his country as a medevac pilot in Vietnam. His beliefs and his life are turned upside down when, instead, he is assigned to fly a Huey gunship. He loves his country deeply, but will not serve it by flying this killing machine. There is only one option for him; by taking it, he threatens to destroy not just himself, but his family.

The book’s chapters switch seamlessly from the physical plight and mental turmoil of one generation to the other, and the reader becomes deeply engrossed in the fate of both, while the book’s prose deftly adapts to the tone and language of the times. 

Without hammering it home, it left me with a troubling message: We are not heeding history. Hence, we have learned nothing!
I submitted Sons of My Fathers to Helen Hollick's Discovered Diamond Review site 

where it indeed earned a sparkling and well-deserved place.


   
Get your Copy at Amazon.com
 Sons-My-Fathers

Just chosen as Book Cover Design of the Month:
 https://discoveringdiamonds.blogspot.com/