Customer Reviews

The French Admiral (Alan Lewrie Naval Adventures)

5 star:		(18)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lambdin's flawed hero is always exciting and matures quite a deal in this novel. Great excitement and true to the rough nature of the American Revolution. While this book is now only available in libraries and used book stores, the back cover of one of his more recent novels stated that it will be rereleased in fall 1999. Don't miss it.

I am an old salt and a devoted reader of O'brian, Nelson, Marryat, Forester, etc. I have read Lambdin's first Alan Lewrie novel, The King's Coat and thoroughly enjoyed it. I bought the rest of the series - all but the second, The French Admiral, in which a major adversary is introduced. For some unexplained reason, the publisher has failed to republish this single book in the series. I am now attempting to locate a copy because I wish to read the series in order.It is a major absence in the highly engaging narrative and in the development of the fascinating characters!

This is the second installment in what is developing into quite an enjoyable naval series. In _The King's_ Coat, Alan Lewrie, an illegitimate sixteen-year-old London rakehell, was essentially forced into going to sea in 1779 as a midshipman after being framed by his moneygrubbing father and his two half-siblings. He had a very rocky start in his new career but was beginning to learn his trade and had made a few friends, as well as more than a few enemies. He had also managed to come to the notice of at least two men of note, and well-placed interest was always paramount in advancing one's naval future. And there was the gorgeous young Lucy Beauman in Antiqua to whom he began paying court. Now it's two years since he left England and the rebellion in America is drawing to a close, buoyed by incompetence on the part of the British army and navy. And in the process, Alan finds himself trapped like a rat with Cornwallis at Yorktown. He escapes the disaster, partly through chance, partly through the aid of some Loyalist militia, and partly through his own intelligence and unexpected competence. By the end of the book, his future has improved in several important ways, both professionally and personally, and he has become a harder sort of person than he was at the beginning. And there's a new love interest, whether he wants to think so or not. Lambdin offers a welcome antidote to the rather proper style of Hornblower and even Audrey -- his sailors swear fulsomely, his protagonists can be just as narrowminded as anyone else in their society -- but he certainly knows his naval lore. And just when you're settling in to an adventurous episode, something horrible happens to remind you of just how bloody a true civil war the glorious American Revolution really was.

I recently purchased another of Lambdin's series and blurb in back from publisher says French Admiral is "forthcoming."

Dewey Lambdin is unique in the Napoleonic naval genre; an American writing about the Royal Navy at its high water mark. Considering that The French Admiral was set during the American Revolution, Lambdin must have felt some interesting conflicts in writing the story. Lambdin's protagonist Alan Lewrie sees the American Revolution through the darkest moments (from the British perspective) in 1781. In The French Admiral Lambdin does a great job of not gilding the lily either way.

In The King's Coat Lambdin introduced young Alan Lewrie as a classic wastrel and the reader follows his progression to a competent midshipman. The book is an eclectic mix of ribald adventures and gory battle scenes. The French Admiral follows in the same vein with the same sense of anarchy until the Battle of Chesapeake Bay when the story becomes darker. Lewrie et al end up at Yorktown before Washington begins his assault. At Yorktown we get the sense of a bloody guerilla war that is filled with atrocities from both sides and the sense of hopelessness of the British cause.

In Lambdin's notes he mentions that the atrocities committed by Banastre Tarleton were well known and documented and he has assumed that atrocities committed by revolutionaries were prevalent. Actually he didn't need to assume that as such atrocities were documented and led to Loyalists immigrating to Canada. Combine examples of man's inhumanity to man with the futility of a lost cause and the darkness of The French Admiral is understandable. There is also a Kafkaesque element to it, as Admiral DeGrasse of the title never enters the action.

The fall of Yorktown should surely strike parallels for contemporary American readers who would remember the fall of Bataan or Saigon or British readers who would remember Singapore. Unlike Dunkirk very few escaped. Fortunately for the reader Lewrie's adventures don't end there. We know his escapades will continue through several more books. Perhaps this will be the darkest entry of the series.

The second book of Lamdin's entertaining naval series. The availibilty of King's Coat, and for that matter the fours books, makes one wonder why book two has not be reprinted. Wait no longer. Strong (and reliable) word has the re-release date sometime in June or July of 1999. Lamdin's books are detailed, action packed, and intriguing. If one enjoys reading Lamdin I highly suggest Patick O'Brian's 18+ series of naval books, and of course Forrestors Hornblower series.

The French Admiral in paper has been awaited by Alan Lewrie fans since 1990. It is the crucial #2 "missing link" from early in the series of Alan's swashbuckling adventures in the age of fighting sail. Although we know the general events of this long-missing novel about the Royal Navy from references in succeeding books, it comes as a throwback to the exciting rakehell that Lewrie was early in his career. The alleged orphan [] of a scheming English knight, Lewrie has a most modest opinion of himself, although he comes of age as a mariner in the course of this pivotal novel. American readers will be most interested that this novel takes place on the Eastern Seaboard, especially during the crucial siege of Cornwallis' troops at York Town. (From the detailed sailing descriptions in the Chesapeake Bay it's a good bet that Lambdin sails there often.) This story offers a chance for an extended look, from the British point of view, at the vicious enmities and fighting that characterized the American Revolution in the genteel South. It does not, however, offer the least personal glimpse of the French Admiral. That august and triumphant sailor, the shipbound Admiral de Grasse, is instrumental in the series of British blunders and defeats that lose the rebel American colonies to England.

The language is a bit rougher than is the salty talk customary in sea stories by genuine British authors. I wonder if Lambdin chose "Lewrie" as his hero's name because it resembles lurid and lewd, which Alan is, although he's not a scoundrel as well. This is a physically bigger book than the other Lambdin pb's I've read, thanks to the customarily expansive McBooks Press edition (i.e., larger type and better paper than the stubby Fawcett Crest/Ballantine editions).

As a strong fan of Dewey Lamdins' books, I've now read them all, The French Admiral was the best. I felt a much greater sense of history and a deeper understanding of the conflict as it impacted the lives of Loyalists, Revolutionaries, and their families. The bloody fighting seemed more in context than the conflicts described in the other books of this series.

I recommend this book very highly.

Surely AMAZON.COM can come to the aid of its customers. The French Admiral is a lynch pin in Lambdin's series and it is disturbing not to be able to get my hands on it

The 2002 McBooks Press version (paperbook) that I bought at Borders has pages 145 through 192 printed twice, and then pages 198 to 241 are missing altogether! I can't imagine how such a mistake could get by. One minute they are setting up in the trenches, the next they are sailing wearily out of the the bay. So...I have no idea what happened and I'm taking it back tomorrow for a refund.

So check it out before you buy it.

Otherwise, great book.