I like his action and sea going sequences in the historical books and it's the same here. Reeman's writing is easy to read and follow.
#EREBUS NOVEL SERIES#
Author of The Blue Pencil, Liberating Belsen and Two Families at War, all published by Sacristy Press.Īfter abandoning the Bolitho books late in the series I decided to try his modern naval fiction series and was not disappointed. Put Paul Greengrass behind the camera and Matt Damon on the bridge and you'd have all the action you could wish.ĭavid Lowther. Reeman is a navy man through and through and this is shown at its best in the battle scenes, especially those in the Dardanelles in 1915 and off Malta in 1941. And, as Barry Norman famously didn't say 'and why not?' In today's post- Brexit Britain where a Prime Minister can appoint Boris Johnson Foreign Secretary and Her Majesty's Opposition is led by a man who can't muster enough support from amongst his own colleagues to form an alternative administration to the elected government, you need cheering up and HMS Saracen does that perfectly. This is absolutely classic Boys Own stuff with a hero you like from page one who has enemies from a higher social status, in command of ship that nobody loves, battling against impossible odds and meeting the girl of his dreams. Its years since I read a Douglas Reeman novel and, dashing through HMS Saracen, I do wonder why. It loses its grip on the reader, but don’t forget that I do like the first half a lot. This is important in a book such as this! His speech is easy to follow all the way through. Too much of his life has passed by without our being part of it.ĭavid Rintoul narrates the audiobook very well. The second half of the book falls flat because much is a repeat and we do not come to fully understand how the central character, Richard Chesnaye, now the captain of H.M.S. They filled me with repulsion and disgust. The second part feels as a repeat both in terms of its characters and the battles. While I cared for the miscellaneous characters in the first part, I felt little for those in the second. We start over again-figuring out who is who and their rank and position in relation to each other. In the second part, a majority of the characters are new.
The first part is both exciting and heartrending. Life on a military ship during the war comes alive. In addition, the stratification of the officers on board is particularly well depicted. You see them and experience them vividly and emotionally. Having read many times about the events as they played out in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, Douglas Reeman’s book puts you right there in the midst of the battles. The Axis viewed Malta as being of vital importance in retaining its control of North Africa.
Malta and the Second World War are the stage where the action unfolds. The young, 17-year-old, central character, a midshipman in the first part, has now become the ship’s captain. Saracen, an Erebus class monitor, but it is no longer one of the promising and new boats of the time. In the second part, we are in the same boat, the H.M.S. 46,000 Allied troops and 65,000 Turkish troops died. The last Allied troops were evacuated in January 1916. In the first month following the storming of the peninsula, the Allies lost 45,000 men. The first focuses on the ill-fated Gallipoli Campaign at the start of the First World War. He also wrote a series of novels about several generations of the Blackwood family who served in the Royal Marines from the 1850s to the 1970s, and a non-fiction account of his World War II experiences, D-Day : A Personal Reminiscence (1984). Reeman is most famous for his series of Napoleonic naval stories, whose central character is Richard Bolitho, and, later, his nephew, Adam. His pseudonym Alexander Kent was the name of a friend and naval officer who died during the Second World War. Reeman's debut novel, A Prayer for the Ship was published in 1958. Douglas married author Kimberley Jordan Reeman in 1985. In addition to being an author, Reeman has also taught the art of navigation for yachting and served as a technical advisor for films. He eventually rose to the rank of lieutenant. Reeman joined the Royal Navy in 1940, at the age of 16, and served during World War II and the Korean War. Douglas Edward Reeman was a British author who has written many historical fiction books on the Royal Navy, mainly set during either World War II or the Napoleonic Wars.
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