Review: Kestrel on the Horizon by Angelia Sparrow and Naomi Brooks

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Blurb from Naomi Brooks’ site here:

Kestrel on the Horizon” is the first in a projected series of pirate novels. Nathaniel Collins never expected to be a slaveholder. But the sad blue eyes of the man on the block spurred him to an impulse purchase. Adlai had expected to inherit his white father’s estate, not be sold with it. He certainly never expected to live a life of piracy.

Review by Alex Beecroft

In a case of love, or at least lust, at first sight, Nathaniel Collins, an English privateer, buys Adlai at the auction of Adlai’s dead father’s goods and property. Collins intends Adlai for his cabin boy and lover, and this rapidly comes to pass, largely because Adlai does not assume he has the right to say ‘no’. Nevertheless, the pair soon grow fond of each other, and Adlai confesses his ambition to earn his freedom and to save enough money from plundering enemy ships to buy back his father’s plantation and run it himself.

This all seems to be going splendidly to plan until Collins’ old nemesis and prior captain, Thomas Harrison, comes on the scene.  Harrison nurtures an old love for Collins, along with a cruel streak, and a sadistic cabin boy of his own by the name of Samir.  Both of them are very keen on the idea of taking Adlai away from Collins and making both men suffer.  
Will Collins ever free his slave?  Will he get the chance, or will Harrison torture Adlai to death first?  Will Adlai ever get his plantation back?  Will Harrison ever get Collins back?  Most of these questions, but not all, are answered by the end of the book.
I find myself reluctant to go on to say whether I liked it or not, mainly because I love sea stories, but on the whole I didn’t care for this one.  I imagine from the ubiquity of pirates, and the presence of Tortuga as a major pirate port that this is set in the later half of the 17th Century.  But some of the medicine involved is mid to late 19th Century.  A crew member pours whiskey on a wound to ‘kill the animaculae’.  While animaculae had been discovered in the 17th Century, they were not in any way thought to cause disease, and sterilization did not occur as a medical concept until very recently.  Indeed, doctors in the 18th Century were glad to see a wound fester – they called it ‘laudable pus’ and considered it part of the normal healing process.  
At one point Adlai is kidnapped using ether, and a crew member says that he looked like a patient the doctor had been operating on earlier.  Given that anaesthesia was not used before the 1840s this puts the date long, long after the age of pirates.
The status of Collins also formed a long-running annoyance for my part.  He’s described as a privateer, and indeed he doesn’t take British ships.  Yet on several occasions he calls himself a pirate, and on one occasion he even hoists the red pirate flag.
To modern readers, there may not be much of a difference between a pirate and a privateer.  But at the time there was a vast chasm between the two.  As a privateer, Collins is a citizen of his country, bound by his country’s laws, entitled to the protection of His Majesty’s Navy on the sea.  He is perhaps not entirely respectable, but he is, nevertheless a civilized member of society.  A pirate is not.  A pirate is a terrorist, an outlaw, outside society, with no rights.  If a privateer was shot in the street, his killer would be arrested for murder; if a pirate was shot in the street, his killer would be congratulated and possibly rewarded.
There is a big difference.  And to my mind it’s a very interesting difference, keeping in tension the requirements of prize-taking ruthlessness at sea and civilized behaviour both at sea and on land.  I would have loved to see Collins’ status as a privateer gone into more deeply; what it meant to be somewhere in between a navy commander and a pirate captain.  But sadly that didn’t happen.  Other than never having to worry about being arrested, Collins is indistinguishable from a pirate.  He even hoists the pirate flag at one point!  I’m sure the authors must be aware that this flag means ’surrender or we kill every living thing on board’, and would instantly brand the vessel a pirate – legitimate prey for any vessel, including one belonging to his own country, that happened to be passing.
Obviously, these problems may seem terribly nit-picking.  That’s why I found myself reluctant to go into them – they spoiled my enjoyment, but they may not spoil the enjoyment of most readers.  I wondered if it was fair of me to criticise just on those grounds.
But when I think of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, with 17th Century pirates, 18th Century Navy, a mention of 19th Century Singapore and Will wearing a musketeer outfit, I don’t care about the lack of historical accuracy because the plot is such fun and the characters so engaging.  If I do care about it here, it may be because I’m not finding enough positives to counterbalance the errors.
For example, most of the action of the book occurs in taverns or in cabins aboard ship.  For a sea-story, there’s very little sea or scenery.  I don’t get the impression that the authors have really thought about the demands of life onboard ship.  At one point Collins demands that his crew set a watch because of the threat of Harrison, thus implying that there was no watch on deck as a regular requirement.  In which case, how on earth did they prevent the ship from being broached to and sunk in the middle of the night?  
I also found Collins and Harrison almost indistinguishable, Adlai too sweet and flawless, and Samir too much of an ‘oriental’ stereotype.  I think that if your kink is for obsessive relationships, dubious consent and power imbalances, then the sex scenes – and there are a lot of them – would make up for a great deal.  I did love the duel.  The fact that Collins prepared for the duel by practicing new techniques, rather than slumping into angst, made me feel well disposed to him in the last chapter or so.
I admired the fact that the book did not sweep slavery under the carpet, though Collins lost points with me for using his slave for sex, and the sudden progression of that relationship into true love didn’t quite work for me.  
On the whole it is a solidly written, well plotted book with battles, kidnaps and sexual shenanigans enough to satisfy most people.  The fact that it didn’t satisfy me may just have been because I was hoping for something different, and didn’t get it.  
I’m certainly going to give the sequel a go, because I’m curious to know whether Adlai manages to get his plantation (possibly no?), and whether Harrison returns as an avenging angel (almost certainly yes?).  I think, on the whole, he was the character I liked most.  And you can never have too many sea stories.  I’m hoping there will be more ship-handling and sailing in the next one, but maybe that’s just me!
 

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Filed under 17th Century, 18th Century, 19th Century, 3½ Stars, Alex Beecroft, Fiction, Reviews, ebook, pirates