Customer Reviews

Invasion: A Kydd Sea Adventure (Kydd Sea Adventures)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Thomas Kydd is a commander in the Royal Navy, facing Napoleon's fleet across the English Channel. Invasion is imminent, and Kydd has been placed at the front of the action. Then, he's pulled off the front lines and asked to be the government liaison with an American inventor, one Mr. Robert Fulton. It's not steamboats that His Majesty's Navy is interested in, though -- it's Fulton's submersibles and his torpedoes - and how much he's told the French about them. Because the Royal Navy is outmatched, and Fulton's high-tech firepower may be what tips the scale back in their favor.

Invasion is the 10th book in Stockwin's Kydd Sea Adventures series. Right there you know there's plenty of backstory that you don't get in this book. Add to that the fact that the reader is dropped right into the middle of the action in chapter 1, as Kydd is demanding a hearing from his commanding admiral, Sir James Saumarez, to clear his name of charges leveled in previous books. I spent most of the first couple of chapters totally confused, which is part of the reason it's taken me so long to finish this book (I got it back in September!). Add to that the thick dialect that much of the dialog is written in, and this one almost got put into the DNF pile.

But that would have been a shame, because the book is actually quite good. In a series as long-running as this one, you're not going to see much characterization in individual books, but you will see a fast-moving plot with a lot of action. If you love the age of wooden ships and iron men, you will enjoy this book -- and this series, for that matter. Stockwin, a former Naval officer himself, knows his stuff; if you don't know a lot about the age of sail, you'll learn from this series.

One of the abiding themes in this particular book seems to be the changing state of warfare at the time. We see some of this in the American Revolution, with the British constantly calling the American militia's guerrilla tactics "ungentlemanly" and "against the rules of warfare." In Invasion, we see this even more, as the Royal Navy debates the idea of using weapons that will essentially make warfare less personal, and probably less glamorous as well. The idea of using stealth to surprise an enemy was frowned upon back then; today, it is practically a requirement for any battle plan.

I am embarrassed to admit that I was ignorant of Fulton's role in developing submarines back in the 1800s; in fact, when I first requested a copy of this book, I though that it was an alternate history because of that. So I learned something in reading the book, which is always a good thing, as I've mentioned before.

Having loved the earlier Kydd novels, I was disappointed with Invasion.Adventure has been sidelined. Julian S seems to have allowed his obsession with military design and development to intrude upon the normal flow and narrative of Kydd at sea, Kydd hellraising,Kydd with a comely wench, Kydd slicing an enemy's shoulder through with his cutlass...
That's why most of us buy his books.

Julian Stockwin has done it again. His character, Thomas Kydd of the British Navy survives a variety of adventures and breaks new ground in Naval fiction with story components that are striking and original. This is the tenth Kydd novel I have read and I have never been disappointed.

The initial several offerings in this series were great, but the characters are not wearing well. Kydd spends too much time worrying about achieving gentleman status while Renzi has become a borderline psychotic would-be philosopher. They both get sidetracked by churlish Robert Fulton, the not quite successful inventor of submarine and torpedo warfare. The hand wringing moralizing about unsportsmanlike killing of the enemy by torpedo doesn't ring true.

"Invasion" is the tenth book in Julian Stockwin's "Kydd" series. These books are set in the Napoleonic-era Royal Navy and follow in the same vein as C.S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey-Maturin books.

In the first book, Kydd was initially a pressed seaman, but Kydd has now earned a king's commission and command of his own ships. In "Invasion," Kydd is in command of a sloop in southern England, preparing for Napoleon's invasion of England. After some early naval action in the book, his friend Renzi is sent to Paris to convince inventor Robert Fulton to defect to England. The rest of the novel unsatisfyingly concerns Kydd's work with Fulton.

Focusing on espionage and a little-known (and, frankly, not very interesting) British plot to use Fulton's planned submarine against the French, this book was one of the weakest in the series. While I do plan to buy the next in the series, another poor effort like this may convince me to stop reading this series.

Julian Stockwin continues to impress me with each book he creates.Invasion was hard to put down (as are all of his books). The author skillfully guides the reader thru scenes like approaching enemy shores at night with tide changing and a rocky shore ahead, dying wind,enemy ships detected, etc.!!The author really made me appreciate how skillful those sailors of old were (without radar, GPS, electronic Depth Sounders,radio com, etc. I would love to meet the author and his wife, Kathy, someday. May they keep up the good work!!

Another positive experience for me was to read this book on my new Kindle. Made the experience even better.

The Kydd books fit nicely into the pantheon of series based on British naval officers performing honorably and heroicly during the Napoleonic Wars at sea. This is genre fiction, based on a specific piece of history, and one should not expect great literature nor that every episode will be better than the last. The experiences of the individuals in question does not differ too greatly from series to series; in fact, Stockwin clearly borrows from O'Brien in casting an intellectual companion to serve as foil to his rougher hewn captain. That said, the Kydd stories are entertaining, and are marked by the device of having Stockwin's protagonist be an officer who came up "from before the mast", that is, Kydd was promoted to the ranks of officers from being a lowly salt rather than entering service first as an ensign. Thus he often slips into the argot of his humble origins. Stockwin seems to have put great effort into maintaining a consistency of dialect, something I cannot judge on the merits but which I find adds a nice layer of atmosphere. I give Stockwin bonus points for trying to reach for drama apart from the inherent drama of ships at sea and war. Sometimes that effort seems labored, but it's rarely boring. In addition to O'Brien, see Dudley Pope, Alexander Kent, Richard Woodman and, of course, the original C.S. Forester to name only the most prolific.

In order to appreciate this book, one should have read some of the other Kydd volumes first. Then this tale makes good sense. Otherwise, I fear the new Stockwin/Kydd reader will become discouraged on this volume. I always enjoy tales of the 18th and 19th century British Navy. It is curious that so few seafaring novels of a similar timed US Navy exist. Need more great seafaring writers.

Nautical Fiction and especially the era of the Age of Sail, or the Napoleonic wars has long been a genre that has had many writers create long, well thought out series. Patrick O'Brian and and CS Forester are among the most well known. Julian Stockwin has his tenth adventure of Thomas Kydd, once a seaman but has passed through the ranks to become an officer.

That has set up problems before for our hero, for he does not speak like the gentry and despite thinking that he should, he constantly reverted before to his origins. Now, he has decided to not go back and in a more modern fashion hires a tutor to help him learn to speak like the upper class that he thinks his wealth has now entitled him to.

By having the hero come from the lower class, he has missed out on the training of the young gentlemen who all came from good families that aspired to command of a king's ship. Here our hero has the skill to sail well and lead, but he forgets his place too often.

He is Captain Kirk, who is constantly with the red shirts in danger. Not Captain Picard sending his number one into danger. Far too often Kydd abuses his power still so that Stockwin can look through his heroes eyes to see what his happening.

It is a fault in Nautical Fiction that authors want to have their heroes experience so many things that they put them ashore. As we students of history at the tenth book of the series could not be trusted to have some knowledge that there was an invasion fleet and force gathering in France, Kydd is sent to the Admiralty and given a briefing on it.

Wait--the Admiral's flag lieutenant would have read the man in on such information, for Kydd commands a sloop. Not even a frigate. Then while in London, well he is now rich with prize money so the Captain at the Admiralty wants to take him to a party where the king happens to pass by.

The sidekick, another factor since O'Brian had brought Martin to our attention, gets to go on a secret mission to Paris in the midst of the war. It fills out the book and we are introduced to the interlude of what this book is about, the development of modern weapons, torpedos and submarines under Robert Fulton. But we miss out on the sea.

In the year between tales, this seems a let down. Even when Hornblower was sent around the world to the Western coast of the America's it was full of action in the midst of these wars. Here I find it lacking and think this is a bridge between some of the better books in the tale.

It's early in 1805 and Commander Thomas Kydd, now a seasoned commanding officer under fire, has regained his job and his ship in this tenth installment in the series (roughly the halfway point, from what the author says), and is sent to join Admiral Keith's squadron in the Downs off the southeast corner of Britain. Napoleon is busily preparing his invasion forces and the Downs Squadron -- whose ships are mostly too old or too small -- is doing its best to disrupt French activities. The set-piece engagement in the first part of the book is a very nicely done large-canvas portrait of the Royal Navy coming down on an enormous fleet of invasion barges filled with troops and their guardian warships as they move down the coast to a rendezvous at Boulogne. Kydd takes his sloop into the thick of things and comes out bruised and bloody but still game. While his ship is being hastily repaired, however, he's seconded (much to his displeasure) to nursemaid an American inventor who has been slipped out of France -- Robert Fulton, later of steamboat fame, but here the inventor of WMDs. Fulton has devised, built, and successfully tested an undersea boat (the first Nautilus) for the French, the implications of which are staggering for the Royal Navy. Nicholas Renzi, ex-nobleman, struggling scholar, and Kydd's particular friend since their days before the mast, got a taste of spycraft in the previous volume of the series and didn't like it a bit. But now he has been inveigled into sneaking into Paris and persuading Fulton to leave, which he manages to do. Kydd acts as facilitator to the inventor, who convinces the Admiralty to underwrite the construction of a series of torpedoes -- though they balk at a submarine -- to be delivered by more conventional means against the French invasion fleet holed up in Boulogne. Evidently, all this actually happened, more or less as Stockwin describes it; definitely a "little-known chapter," as they say. But the author gives no indication of whether the climactic attack itself actually occurred. I'll have to do some research to satisfy my curiosity, I guess. As it happens, Stockwin does a much better job when he sticks to naval matters. The earlier part of the book, when Kydd must hazard his little brig-sloop as part of the attempt to prevent Napoleon's invasion fleet from completing its preparations, is much more convincing and satisfying than when Renzi is wandering around Paris trying to talk Fulton into leaving France. Bonaparte's secret police were notably efficient and I frankly find it hard to believe Renzi wouldn't have ended up in a deep cell somewhere. In short, this is one of the less well done efforts in the series. Well, Trafalgar will be coming up very quickly. Will Kydd and his loyal crew have a part in that? He has the medals for Camperdown and the Nile; will he acquire a third one? And perhaps the author won't have a reason to allow his hero to stray ashore or be diverted next time.