It almost felt like this book was written by two different authors. The first ~150 pages mostly take place on land, focusing on a boring, cringe-inducing romance story, with incredibly poorly written women characters (with descriptions along the lines of “she was a very womanly woman who had not a thought in her head while she did womanly things in her womanly ways”). I was damn close to giving the book up, but held on just long enough for the book to shift back to its strength, which is descriptions of life at sea, sailors, naval battles, and the like. Here, the writing was vastly better, with good action scenes and funny banter amongst the men, including some decent humor. The prose was flat out better and the book read much faster. This lasted another ~150 pages before shifting back to the romance, and then back to the sea, and back to romance, and so on for the rest of the book.
Overall, a very mixed bag. I wish the book just stuck to its strengths, as the parts at sea were a joy to read, whereas the rest was a real slog.
Rating: 3 stars
Yevgeniy Brikman
If you enjoyed this post, you may also like my books. If you need help with DevOps, reach out to me at Gruntwork.