A Darker Sea

I love naval fiction. Patrick O’Brian is my favorite author. The Hornblower series is almost as good. Dewey Lambdin’s Alan Lewry series is good, but a notch or two down. I had high hopes for this series featuring Bliven Putnam since it features the fledgling US Navy and my favorite ship of all, the USS Constitution I trust that the history is correct. It’s all well documented so it should be. It’s always fun to catch up on naval history. Unfortunately, the story line is way too unrealistic. And the author loses track of the chronology of the events. It’s is simply impossible that a young man could join the Navy as a midshipman, and three months later be promoted to Lieutenant. That process takes many years, sometimes decades, no matter how much bravery one demonstrates. It just wasn’t done. And the story is written as though there is only Putnam and the individual captains running the show. No mention of all the other senior midshipmen and lieutenants. As far as chronology is concerned, how can Putnam help save Sam’s life by performing some rudimentary form of CPR after they both jumped from the Java and were brought aboard the Connie, Sam basically dead. Remember, Putnam went aboard and took over the bow chasers, raked the Java’s quarterdeck killing the Captain and ending the battle. After all that, he had time to mosey on down to the sickbay and help revive Sam through CPR. Come on! You can do better than that! Two books, that’s enough for me from this series.