Review: Napoleonic war tale features new sci-fi ideas (with video)

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• Category: Fiction
• Published on Thursday, 01 December 2011 08:50
• Written by Joe Follansbee
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Their Lordships Request: A Harry Heron Adventure, by Patrick G. Cox. AuthorHouse, 266 pages, softcover, $18.00.

Authors of nautical fiction never seem to tire of the Napoleonic Wars, continuously mining the conflict between France and Great Britain for new characters and ideas. South African writer Patrick G. Cox has opened a fresh series in the genre with the story of a teenage Midshipman Harry Nelson-Heron, the son of minor Irish gentry, who is transferred to the new 74-gun HMS Spartan with his boyhood friend, Ferghal O’Connor. Great Britain and France have just signed the Peace of Amiens, which amounted to little more than a truce between the European superpowers of the day.

Harry and his friend, along with the other Spartans, are assigned to guard a convoy of prison ships bound for New South Wales, Australia, with a cargo of people sentenced to exile Down Under. Along the way, Harry encounters the expected adventures, including a fleet of slavers off the coast of Africa. Cox is at his best as Harry goes into battle with pirates, which attack one of the prison ships with a xebec, a ship with two means of propulsion: lateen sails and oars. Cox has mastered the culture and language of the period in both description and dialog. The final moments of the xebec skirmish are truly exciting, ending with an image that reminds the reader of the horrible fate of slaves on the losing side.

Cox’s historical tale is fairly conventional with themes readers expect from coming of age stories. However, Cox weaves an interesting, but separate thread into this novel, a parallel story of the launching of a large spacecraft in orbit above Mars. The year is 2202, and the warship Vanguard is fitting out for its first assignment under the command of Captain James O’Niall Heron. Though the surnames are the same, and the “nautical” feel of the shipboard culture is similar to its Napoleonic mirror, the relationship between the two Herons isn’t clear. That said, the progress of the story implies that each will have something to teach the other.

With his parallel stories, Cox is attempting to breathe new life into an old genre, and Their Lordships Request ends with a promise that the two threads will converge into one, creating the exciting possibility of something original. The next two books in the series—Out of Time and The Enemy is Within—are definitely on my reading list.

Visit Patrick G. Cox’s website. Do you have a new nautical fiction in the works? This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. about it!

Watch an interview with Patrick Cox about the family inspiration for his character Harry Heron.