Customer Reviews

The Powder Monkey

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Anyone with an appreciation for American history or an interest in the age of sail will love this book. The author clearly has a great command of the history of early 19th century Baltimore and the book packs the same kind of pop that I enjoyed in classics like Treasure Island. I particularly enjoyed the religious undertones. In a world where books with dark themes and moral gray-areas are a dime-a-dozen, The Powder Monkey is a welcome change of pace. I highly recommend it.

Georg Galloway's The Powder Monkey is an engaging and entertaining seafaring historical novel set during the War of 1812. The story is one of a young man who ventures forth to search for his father -- and for the meaning of the code of Aquinas. The Powder Monkey is filled with romance, mystery, and high seas adventure; it is a quest within the heart as well as among the waves. Georg Galloway is an undeniably talented author who has written an unforgettable tale of adventure.

Michael Dooley is an apprentice cooper in his father's shop in Baltimore when a series of disasters strikes his family: his mother dies of a fever, his father is pressed by a British ship, and the outbreak of the War of 1812 places his father on the enemy's side of the fighting. It doesn't help that Michael's Uncle Bob is a drunk or that 12-year-old Michael is left to run the family business alone.

So Michael decides to go to sea, figuring if he helps to win the war, his father will come home. Michael's uncle joins him, as does Jessica, the orphan girl who fancies him. They all end up on a vessel that easily evades the British blockade of the Chesapeake and easily takes every British merchant ship it finds.

Along the way, they decide to invade Ireland. They succeed, fairly easily.

Worse still, most of the action takes place off-page. We're told something happened, but we don't get to see it.

It's worth noting that Galloway places his characters on the Chasseur, an actual privateer ship commanded by Capt. Thomas Boyle. The accomplishments of that ship and crew are a remarkable story; it's a shame Galloway felt the need to exaggerate it so -- to the point of making the Chasseur almost solely responsible for winning the war and her crew, almost to a man, responsible for the heroic defense of New York's crucial Lake Champlain against a massive British invasion force.

I can't say I enjoyed this book. The ship is just too good, her captain too lucky and pretty much everyone you meet just too deucedly nice. Galloway tosses in a villain every now and then, seemingly as an afterthought, but it doesn't erase the feeling that everyone in the world wants to help out young Michael, the poor boy. And gosh, he's just so darn likable, you want him to do well.

The worst moment comes when Galloway asks us to believe that a happy and successful crew, with a vast fortune in prize money awaiting them in port, would mutiny over a spot of bad weather. This mishandled scene was contrived, apparently, just to put poor Jessica in a bit of anticlimactic peril.

But it's not all Galloway's fault. A good editor would have sat him down for a chat, sent him home for a rewrite or two, and possibly helped him to produce a better book. The nuggets are there, sadly unrefined.

by Tom Knapp, the Rambles.(net) guy