Corsair

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Story in search of characters - Rated
I picked up this book based on my pleasant experiences reading Severin's travel writing. It is often relevant to maritime history and attempts to recreate the experience. Aside from this unique approach, he usually becomes sufficiently knowledgeable of the subject that these books are informative.

Corsair unfortunalty is a pastiche of episodes strung togeather in which Severin only relies on his historical knowledge. The story line is almost devoid of character depth and close to caricature - three amigos; handsome intelligent Irish youth, grizzled savvy, street smart French criminal, native amerindian noble savage. The story line was so predictable that while reading I took to predicting which happenstance would resole their plight. Slavery is central to the book which Severin describes but he makes no effort to illustrate its impact on European and Islamic culture. Severin doesn't deviate from simple story telling.

So what was worthwhile? Well, new historical knowledge easily assimilated about a period I was not that familiar with. Would I recommend it - only if you are a dyed in the wool fan of the period or the maritime world

poor - Rated
Took this book on holiday to Antigua but did`nt bring it home. only read 50-60 pages & not impressed enough to keep going. Sorry but very hard to enjoy anything about this book.

good detail not enough story... - Rated
This book is a prime example of an author delving deeply into the history books to create a world full of accurate details and realistic settings but forgetting that his main job is telling an engaging story... It all seemed to flit from one place to another without any real characterisation, while the end was (how else to put it) a bit of a damp squib... It's a shame, nice ideas, poor execution...

Tim's Pirates - Rated
Tim's brand new series to sail the seven seas with. Whilst we have come to know Tim as not only a practical author who has completed challenges to see how accurate the documentation or oral tales of the times are but also on the level of technologies of our ancestors were, we have also come to respect him for his hugely energetic and fast action paced Viking Trilogy adventure.

What I came to expect and hoped for with this new series made it one of my highlights for the second part of this year. Alas I was left feeling a little cheated with the first novel, well that's not exactly accurate the beginning piece left me feeling cheated whilst the rest of the novel took a while to build up my trust in his talent. Why was this? Well personally I felt that we really didn't get a chance to know the principle protagonist in much the same way that we did with his other series and as such made it difficult to come to grips with the challenges of his life let alone the agonies to which he was afflicted.

However as the novel continued we did get a glimpse of the talent that made me sit up and listen to his earlier fiction and gently brought me back into the type of tale I have come to expect. Whether this first novel was designed to be more of an introduction to his world rather than a full throttle excitement is what we will have to wait to see, yet we know that the next novel in the series will see not only massive challenges for our heroes but also allow the reader to see how each of them will rebuild their lives after the events in the first installment, whether I'd buy this novel before the second part is available I think that I'd probably leave it. This is due to my own chain of thoughts that if the second installment is going to do what I suspect it will, it will make the series a hard to put down necessity. I just hope that this is going to be the case and that Tim will not prove to be a one fiction series author.

Arrrrrrggggggggggggghhhhhhh - Rated
If you like pirates you'll like this - Hectorrrrr Lynch is a fabbo character and I was right there with him on the high seas from start to finish! Give it a try, ship-mates!!