February Book Review by Ted

Well, it's Saturday and I just realized that I did not send Nancy a Book Review for February...Deadline is Monday so it can be on the blog Tuesday. Writers, do you have deadlines??? I'm not used to them, unless it is to make house and utility payments!

I will plead being too busy. We are preparing to leave Kansas where we have lived the last 35+ years. I don't think I will miss it. The last 2 weeks have been something else. Last Sunday in January was sunny and warm ( 55 F ), by Tuesday we were in a blizzard with 5 inches of snow falling sideways at 35 mph with gusts to 45+. Temp dropped to -1 F by Thursday morning. Then it warmed up into the 50s again by Sunday. Guess what! Tuesday it started to get cold and Wednesday it was snowing. It was almost falling straight down or as straight down as it gets in Kansas. By Thursday morning we were -17F and had 15 inches of new snow! Friday (yesterday) brought -8 in the morning and 48F by 5PM. Today we were in the mid 40's. By next Thursday we are expected to be in the 70s !

Anyway, this month I promised you a review of a book by my second or third favorite author. He is also a male author who writes books primarily for a male audience, but I think a female will enjoy then also. Bernard Cornwell lives on Cape Cod and writes and writes and writes. If my count is correct, this is his 46th book. I can say a couple things off the top: 1) This is a lot of writing. 2) This is a lot of books sold! 3) Some have been made into TV shows. Oh yes, and I have read every one of them.

There are 21 in the Richard Sharpe series alone. The BBC has made several of them into movies. They are real action stories.

I'll review his latest: THE FORT.... published in 2010. It is not one of the Sharpe series.The book is set in the Massachusetts Colony during the Revolutionary War ( 1779 ), the story tells of a battle in Penobscot Bay in what is now Maine. There was a small village of mostly loyalists living there and Britain decided to fortify the bay to keep the Americans from taking it and using it as a naval base to attack Canadian and British shipping.

The problem was the disjointed colonies were hard put to get troops and ships to build a fort. There was militia from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, 1 regulation U S Navy Frigate, 20 or so privateers, Massachusetts Navy, Connecticut Navy, Indian tribes who all form a coalition to occupy the area . Well, by the time they finished making preparations, the British had landed a force and began to fortify the Bay.

It is interesting to know that basically all the heroes were the British and the villains are the Americans. The book is well researched--I even checked on some of the history-- and presented in a very readable "fiction" work. In fact, I started it and read right through until it was finished.

Interested in historical fiction? Not afraid to find out that one of our biggest heroes for the Revolutionary War was court-martialed for obstructing and then deserting the battle? Wonder how the colonists ever actually won our independence??? Well, the true story makes me wonder. But remember, one battle does not make a war.

Since I am a big fan, you know I will highly recommend reading this book. I don't want you to think I give him a blank check for writing...there were a couple of books several years ago that he wrote that I did not even finish. They bogged down and I lost interest. This will not happen if you read THE FORT...