Mutiny

Book excerpt: In the grand tradition of Patrick O'Brian, this new installment in Julian Stockwin's epic Napoleonic-era naval adventure series re-creates one of history's most notorious naval insurrections. With all the wind-whipped passion and salty authenticity that only a veteran naval lieutenant commander could bring to the fiction table, bestselling author Julian Stockwin continues the acclaimed saga of seaman Thomas Paine Kydd as he takes on the most perilous venture of his career. The year is 1797. Kydd has been at sea four long, hard years, ever since he was pressed into service. Despite that inauspicious start to his naval career, he has learned to love his life aboard ship. It's in his blood. It's in his soul. Having now risen to the rate of master's mate, Kydd volunteers to join the crew of the frigate Bacchante in a mission to rescue a British diplomat mired in the hostilities of Napoleon's siege of Venice. The city is surrounded. It will soon fall to Napoleon, and the diplomat will be trapped unless Kydd and the men from Bacchante can help him escape. Stockwin's rousing narrative follows Kydd and his mysterious seafaring mate Nicholas Renzi across the Mediterranean to a rendezvous with danger, and then back toward an even greater challenge -- a harrowing fleet mutiny. As the king's loyal servant, Kydd must decide whether to join his shipmates in their uprising. The cause is just -- sailors' pay has not been raised for a century and a half! But to mutiny is to commit the ultimate treason against king and country. Will Kydd honor his pledge to his sovereign lord, or will he stand by his friends? Kydd faces the most difficult decision of his life in this richly nuanced novel from a master storyteller whose naval expertise and love for the sea shine through on every page.