Customer Reviews

Passage to Mutiny

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This highly enjoyable novel features perhaps the most unusual setting and theme of any of the classic naval adventures by Kent, Forrester or O'Brien. The action takes place in the brief period of peace between the end of the American War of Independence and the start of the French Revolutionary Wars, while the location, the Pacific, is far from the arenas in which the British, French and other major navies normally waged their battles. Captain Richard Bolitho is nevertheless confronted with a daunting series of challenges. Characters from earlier novels, including Bolitho's secret love Viola, also have their roles, usually painful and demanding, to play. The descriptions of encounters with Polynesian Islanders are both convincing and obviously founded on sound research. The same applies to the description of the infant colony of New South Wales - indeed one marvels that in the short two centuries since the major nation of Australia has arisen so quickly on such a shaky foundation. The most memorable event of the story, a gruelling ocean passage in an open boat, is closely modelled on Bligh of the Bounty's epic journey in the same waters, is so well described that the reader feels uncomfortable while perusing it! On the whole, a most enjoyable novel in the Bolitho saga and well worth reading.

Passage to Mutiny is the fourth Kent novel set outside of an actual war and the fourth that deals with pirates. In the past Richard Bolitho has ultimately enjoyed great success against pirates while Kent has had mixed success writing about it. This time Kent gets it right in a nail biting, blood and thunder epic. Perhaps Kent's Bolitho adventures reached their peak in the mid-70s and Passage to Mutiny is an example of the writer in top form.

Five years after Command a King's Ship Bolitho is off to Botany Bay. The spectre of two famous captains, Cook and Bligh, hangs over the voyage. Cook explored much of the region and was ultimately killed in the Pacific and Bligh has just lost his ship to mutiny. While he may have fears of mutiny, Kent's Bolitho has both the leadership abilities and humanity of Cook and the seafaring ability of Bligh. His crews will stand with him to the death.

Bolitho's paramour and nemesis from Command a King's Ship are both back to complete the story that Kent started in the earlier novel. While reading Command a King's Ship I was thinking that Bolitho should back off from having a relationship with a married woman no matter what her husband is like, Kent had me thinking that Bolitho should go for it and squeeze whatever happiness he could out of the opportunity that he had.

However, Passage to Mutiny is really about broadsides, thwarting pirates and a great sailing epic. The romance is just a little fluff along the way while manly men do manly things. The story is exciting and succeeds on that level. I did have a few problems with it though. Kent is not always clear on details such as how the wind is blowing, what direction the shore is and the way ports face. He really should include maps or provide additional details so that the reader can visualize what's happening accurately. One can't always figure out why Bolitho is so brilliant if one doesn't know which way the wind is blowing and which direction the ship is sailing.

Still and all I was wrapped up in this one and I look forward to the next Bolitho adventure.

Richard Bolitho's new command is the Tempest, a 36-gun frigate, built in India of teak. a fifth class like his last command. But teak is a very heavy, dense wood; much heavier than the English oak usually used in the construction of ships of the Royal Navy, and therefor less maneuverable--but exceptionally strong.

The Tempest is picked up in the story entering the harbor at Sydney, the main port of the prison colony of Botany Bay (now known as Australia.)

The Commodore to whom he reports is an old friend with whom he served when they were both lieutenants. But another old acquaintance was also arriving soon from England: the government advisor, James Raymond and his wife Viola, with whom Bolitho had fallen in love on the last occasion of their company, five years previously.

The story continues through attacks by the pirate Mathias Tuke, broadsides, shore parties, a long sea episode in an open boat, hostile savages, and the loss of many good friends and crew members in battler and from fever, and the near loss of Bolito's own life.

This is a fine novel, as is typical of Alexander Kent, and the seventh in the Bolitho series. I have ordered the next three in the series, so taken by the stories am I.

Joseph (Joe) Pierre, USN(Ret)

author of Handguns and Freedom...their care and maintenance
and other books

A sequel to Command a King's Ship, Bolitho sails his Tempest farther east into the contested fringes of the British, Spanish and French empires. Capt. Bolitho is among the the islands in the Great South Sea, which is not so Pacific as it echoes to thunderous broadsides and murderous intrigue. Mutiny is in the air again. The state-sponsored (merchantile) economy of peacetime England is rotten, royalist France is in turmoil before its revolution, and the amazing Bligh has survived the mutiny on the Bounty. We see Polynesia in a more exciting time, when traders and free booters were only just entering islands of lovely but deadly natives amid the clash of unsettled national interests and claims. Bolitho has finally met his match in the form of an utterly ruthless and clever pirate who outwits Bolitho time and again, despite the desperate courage of his lieutenants. Kent has again come up with a wonderfully evil pirate to fight, even though we hardly meet him. Is Bolitho too besotted with his love for Viola, who has returned with her husband to develop an island colony? Unfortunately Kent makes Viola's husband so wholly irredeemable there's no tension there. Into this comes a French frigate under a tyrannical captain just as news of the outbreak of the French Revolution roils the tense waters and dubious loyalties further. The effects of tropical heat are graphically displayed, and the implacable scourge of fever finally makes its appearance in the series.

Passage to Mutiny was my first Bolitho adventure. I have read them all, but nothing captured my imagination quite as much as this one. Bolitho and his crew set out to find Eurotas, which was captured by pirates. The relationships between Bolitho and Herrick; and Bolitho and Viola; are vivid and bring out Bolitho's character to enhance the suspensful plot. The fight on the beach ending with Herrick having his back to the sea as a final desperate measure while Tempest's launch arrives just in time to save them kept me on the edge of my seat. I don't think I breathed for at least two chapters. It was one of the most satisfying reads I have ever had.

Captain Richard Bolitho's Royal Navy frigate Tempest arrives in Sydney, Australia in October 1789, and is promptly sent to sea again to find out why a merchantman carrying a diplomat and a load of transported prisoners has not yet reached the infant colony. Aboard that merchantman are Bolitho's love from five years earlier, Viola Raymond, and her husband - the diplomat, who has been sent out to the Great South Sea to govern a remote island outpost. Bolitho's first lieutenant and best friend, Thomas Herrick, heartily disapproves of his relationship with Viola. So does her husband, a rarely one-dimensional character for author Kent. If James Raymond has any redeeming features, they aren't apparent even in scenes written from his viewpoint. Viola's determination to do what she is now sure she ought to have done five years ago, and leave James Raymond for Richard Bolitho, does not drive the book's plot; but it does supply one of the major conflicts, as Bolitho struggles to behave as honorably as he can while protecting Viola from a situation into which he feels no decent husband would have brought her. To do this he must battle pirates, hostile native islanders, and a French frigate whose captain he quickly learns to be a monster.

Despite the flat characterization of James Raymond, who is in his way the worst among a gallery of otherwise colorful rogues and villains, this rousing adventure story works well. Bolitho's inner conflicts matter at least as much as the outward ones, which include news of the French Revolution reaching the Great South Sea just in time for the tale's climax. Kent has a real gift for describing the ugliness of war without gratuitous lingering. He is one writer who really understands that "less can be more" where such things are concerned. He also does well at providing necessary political background without interrupting the story's flow.

--Reviewed by Nina M. Osier, author of "Granite Island"

Mr Kent proves once more that he is a master story teller. This book is alive with characters who face a series of dangerous adventures in the service of their king. The story has everything: brigands, upturned cannon, splintered decks, heroic struggle against the odds, friendship, romance, some terrific dialog and character developement, hostile islanders, Royal Marines, some rather bloody battles and above it, Richard Bolitho stands true to his calling. The plot and sub plots are splendidly told and fill the pages with attention to detail, a rich feel for the time period and Allday backing his captain with his broad back and gleaming cutlass.
Great stuff to read on a rainy afternoon by a crackling fire.
What is great about the Kent books is the fact that as in real life, people arrive, influence, some move on and others die. Told with flair and a bold descriptive style makes Kent's books some of my very favorite.
Enjoy