Set the Seas on Fire (Paperback)

~ Chris Roberson (Author)
Key Phrases: first volcano, island warriors, tattooed warrior, Chris Roberson, Set the Seas, Captain Ross (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Roberson adds a pulpy twist to Napoleonic-era naval adventure as the crew of a damaged English frigate finds both paradise and hell on a pair of uncharted Pacific islands. First Lt. Hieronymus Bonaventure, last seen in Paragaea (2006), serves gamely aboard the HMS Fortitude, but longs for something more exciting than harrying galleons across the South Pacific for an aging captain dreaming of padding his retirement stash. When the Fortitude is badly damaged and blown into mare incognita, the unknown sea, the crew manages to reach a tropical island where the natives are friendly and the ship can be repaired. An attack by bat-winged creatures foreshadows the danger awaiting on the forbidden island of first volcano, where Bonaventure leads his men when his native lover, Pelani, is kidnapped. Roberson delivers a fairly standard but well-crafted adventure story for most of the book before delving into the supernatural. The novel is a good bet for adventure fans who want more than your average Horatio Hornblower clone. (Aug.)
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Product Description

In 1808, while Europe burns and the Napoleonic Wars set the world aflame, the HMS Fortitude patrols the sea lanes of the South Pacific, harrying enemies of the British Crown. The Fortitude's captain sets his sights on a Spanish galleon weighted down with a fortune in gold and spices, but Lieutenant Hieronymus Bonaventure thinks the prize not worth the risk. The ship is smashed by storms and driven far into unknown seas, the galleon and her treasure lost in the tempest.

Bonaventure and the rest of the Fortitude's crew find themselves aground on an island in uncharted waters. The island is a place of magic and mystery, promising the crew rest and contentment. But beneath the beauty lurks a darker secret: an ancient evil buried at the living heart of a volcano. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 384 pages
• Publisher: Solaris (September 4, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844164888
• ISBN-13: 978-1844164882
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,494,757 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Swashbuckling Good Time, September 4, 2007

By	SciFiChick "www.SciFiChick.com" (Fishers, IN USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

In the early 1800s, young Hieronymus Bonaventure is a lieutenant aboard the HMS Fortitude. His ship encounters two extremely ill Spanish sailors, spouting danger about a nearby island. But as the HMS Fortitude is damaged, the crew must seek refuge on the closest island, and meanwhile try to uncover the truth from the Spaniards. The island on which the British crew arrives is a seemingly tropical paradise, complete with friendly natives. But when the British express interest in the volcanic island nearby, the natives warn them that the island is forbidden and dangerous, of supernatural proportions.

The story jumps back and forth between Hieronymus as a young boy, just beginning to learn swordplay, and as Lieutenant aboard the Fortitude. From his early years, we learn about his excitement for adventure and what has shaped him into the man he is to become. Following Hieronymus' adventures as a man, we're treated to a swashbuckling good time. With action and suspense a plenty, Set the Seas on Fire is a wonderful adventure on the high seas.

3.0 out of 5 stars A Yawing Yarn of Misadventure, June 5, 2009

By	Jeannie Mancini "vernefan" (Northborough, MA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Hieronymous Bonaventure, to his father's utter dismay, is a thrill-seeking young man with a mind forever dreaming of adventuring off to exotic locations, instead of leading the scholarly life his father wishes him to pursue. Set the Seas on fire is a story that in the telling, alternates back and forth from the time he is a young boy training in the art of fencing with his long time tutor and mentor Giles Dulac, to his present day late 1700s position as lieutenant aboard a frigate ship in the fleet of Nelson's Royal Navy.

On the cover of the Solaris trade paperback edition, the blurb at the bottom touted by Revolution SF, describes the novel in this way: "Horatio Hornblower meets H.P. Lovecraft". With that I was expecting a Patrick O'Brien Napoleonic Wars high seas adventure, with perhaps a blend of horror added to make things interesting. Somehow I rather believe that little advertising ditty was a bit misleading. Yes, the story starts out with our hero on board Her Majesty's ship the Fortitude, and immediately the reader DOES get a quick dance with the frigate attacking a Spanish Galleon that they hope to reap a hefty golden prize from. However, the high seas volley between the enemy ships lasts just a page or two due to a fierce storm causing invisibility and leaving both captains with the only option of retreating. The Spanish Galleon disappears in the fog, leaving the Fortitude lost and thinking the galleon sunk. And there lies the end of the Napoleonic war part of this tale.

From there on, the rest of the story becomes more like Melville's Typee, where the ship and it's crew are forced to land on a South Seas island, complete in it's paradise atmosphere, lush and green and filled with Island natives. When the crew lost the Galleon prize in the fog, they set sail hunting it down and came upon another island first, where the Spanish ship had floundered, leaving for some ghastly reason unknown, just two survivors. One Spanish sailor unconscious, the other alert but very ill, both speaking no English. Finding no other inhabitants and no food, the crew of the Fortitude rescue the two sailors and again set off for the island paradise more adaptable for survival. One sailor lives, and lives to tell the strange tale that the island they wrecked on was a place of hell, where all the others have died. But the Captain of the Fortitude has plans to return, to do nothing else but remove the gold aboard the Spanish galleon, and he deviously plots for their imminent return.

Hoping to stay on this island of Eden for a few months to replenish their food supplies and to make the extensive repairs the ship needs, what lies ahead for Captain, crew and our hero Bonaventure is a rather simple, yet enjoyable lighthearted narrative of island life. Learning the culture of the people, their language, and basic survival skills are just part of their daily routine while completing their repairs in order for them to again set sail. In the midst of this Robinson Crusoe adventure, Hieronymous falls in love with the Island King's daughter and this too gives us a more personal story enfolded within the rest of the tale. Once repairs are made and the two lovers are forced to part, the Fortitude and crew set sail, treasure bound to the island the Spanish called Hell, and to the place the islanders forbid their people to go, for they say that nothing but death will await you there.

Without revealing what Bonaventure and friends find on this devilish island, I must put forth that although the story isn't a bad one, it's not fabulous. I kept waiting for some action, some drama, something horrific and scary to give me that "Lovecraft" aspect the cover blurb touted. There is no excitement here, and the story sort of just plods along and the reader ends up rather bored. There are a couple of paranormal occurrences to bring the book an oddity or two, but certainly nothing to frighten or wow the reader into anticipation of an riveting yarn. The author does get a few points for character development. I'd love for him to do more stories based on the adventures of Bonaventure if he could step up the pace and add a little excitement. I almost want to say this book just needed more. More action, more events, a bit more emotional drama. Even the romantic aspect between Bonaventure and his island love Pelani, fell very very flat and the way he had them part was profoundly lame for the depth of the relationship they had together. For a seasoned author, I was disappointed and expected a higher quality of novel, so I can't really rave about this book. It was just ok.

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Genre Bender on the South Seas, April 7, 2009

By	Keith W. Harvey "Poet and Author of Petroglyphs" (Dallas, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Set the Seas on Fire (Paperback)

Early in Chris Roberson's "Set the Seas on Fire" (Solaris 2007), an intellectual debate breaks out among the crewmen regarding the question: is there one ocean or many on this watery planet of ours? The protagonist of the novel, Lieutenant Hieronymous Bonaventure, takes the position that "There is, I put to you, but one ocean, around which the lands we know are arranged like a necklace of stone and tree. A true orbis terrarium, the circle of lands of which the ancients spoke, and which we are just now rediscovering to be the truth." Later, at the end of the novel, Bonaventure speaks again of the watery world: "Bonaventure knew well that there was but one sea, vast and unending."

Within the image of the "unending sea" we have the metaphor of the novel. Bonaventure as hero is, in a sense, "unending." As he should be, because, after all, he is a "pulp fiction" hero. However, there is another more important meaning in the image of the unending sea--a literary conclusion about the nature of genre, which I contend is Chris Roberson's true subject. In other words, in his literary weltanschauung there are no boundaries between the various genres. A historical novel can easily morph into a tale of horror and a hero in a tale of horror can step through a portal into another world. So "Set the Seas on Fire" is a "genre" bender, a mélange of pulp fiction tropes.

Chris Roberson, like Robert E. Howard and Michael Moorcock, is working within the confines of pulp fiction. Pulp fiction arose in inexpensive magazines in the 1920s and continued through the 1950s in mass market paperbacks. Pulp fiction contained a wide variety of genre topics: fantasy, detective, western, science fiction, adventure and westerns. Some writers of pulp mixed the genres, creating some of the more exciting and enduring stories. Additionally because the stories were short, the pulp writers learned how to tell an intriguing story concisely. Within a sentence or two the writer was knee-deep in the action.

In the first and last analysis, then, "Set the Seas on Fire" is a pulp fiction/heroic fantasy, tending toward horror, and should be read as such. And Chris Roberson is a meta-fictionist skillfully playing with the genre tropes. His precursors, on one hand, arise from film and horror, history and adventure, fantasy and science fiction; and on the other, there seems to be a hidden alliance with Jorge Borges and Paul Auster. To read the novel otherwise is to cause confusion.

Although the uninformed reader might stumble onto the book and think it was historical fiction, which it masquerades as, it is only historical fiction to the extent of setting and costumes. Its true progeny lies closer to the works of Robert E. Howard. In fact, I found myself several times as I was reading remembering Howard's stories of Solomon Kane, the 16th Puritan adventurer. Roberson even goes so far as to name an island warrior and Bonaventure's adversary in love--Kane. There is also a conscious nod to Michael Moorcock and his von Bek novels.

Yes, it is true that Roberson grounds the novel in facts but that is only to heighten the vertigo you feel when the horror arrives.

The novel begins on a clear day in 1792 in England in one genre--the adventure tale. Children play on a majestic estate, an opening similar to the beginning scene of William Wellman's 1939 production of Beau Geste, which situates us in the world of Wellman and Curtiz. This is the tale of the hero arising from modest circumstances to become a hero. In chapter two, however, we are on a ship in the South Seas. Now we are in the world of the Bounty, on a British frigate, or maybe sailing with Sabatini's Captain Blood. I am sure that many readers compared it to Patrick O'Brien's "Master and Commander." Ah, we say, it is a nautical adventure.

Later the hero lands on an island paradise but there are rumors of monsters and demons. Eventually, Bonaventure falls in love like Fletcher Christian but he encounters grotesque beasts like Solomon Kane.

So, I think the pleasure of "Set the Seas on Fire" lies in four things: first, the convincing historical setting; two, the purity of the prose and the movement of the plot; three, the mixing of genre; and four, the expectation of surprise that arises from the knowledge that Roberson is playing with genre.

Of these four, I want to expand on the element of surprise or suspense. Roberson establishes the expectation of horror early with Bonaventure's encounter with the two Spanish castaways. From that point on the reader knows the other genre shoe will soon drop. But the question is how soon and exactly when. Roberson leisurely lead the reader down many paradisiacal paths.

In conclusion, as a fantasy reader and a fan of pulp fiction, I found "Set the Seas on Fire" satisfying. However, if you are seeking another "Master and Commander" you may be disappointed. But if you like Solomon Kane and von Bek you will be happy with your choice.