Ships of All Seas

Ebooks and the like have been a boon for writers and consumers of genre fiction, as self-published works become easier and cheaper to produce and existing publishers can take more risks on what might otherwise be marginally performing material. Since the margin is smaller, so is the risk and therefore the chances someone will take that risk go up.

Military space opera has been a great beneficiary of this trend, for better or worse. It seems like a lot of its devotees fancy themselves able to put together an interesting space navy yarn and the now lower bar allows more of them to do so. The smaller expense of an e-book or Kindle purchase -- smaller, that is, except in cases when authors think waaay too highly of their work -- nudges the reader towards a buy. As you might expect, a lot of the product is dreck. But not all of it, and so comes now Siobhan Dunmoore of the Commonwealth Space Navy as she battles invading Shrehari forces in front and her own sometimes corrupt, sometimes incompetent chain of command behind.

Eric Thomson introduced Dunmoore in 2014's No Honor in Death, as she tried to rehabilitate her own shattered soul and the proverbial "worst ship in the fleet," the Stingray. By book 4, 2017's Victory's Bright Dawn, she commands the Q-ship Iolanthe, designed to lure raiders into range with its clumsy appearance before unmasking mighty weapons and destroying opponents. An unscheduled refueling stop brings a shocking discovery, as both an out-of-the-way colony and its naval depot have been attacked and nearly destroyed. Some clues point the way to the raiders, so the Iolanthe will try to hunt them down aided by soldiers from the colony. But several things about the raid itself seem off to Dunmoore and her perceptive crew, so they keep an eye open for trouble. The only problem is that they may be looking in the wrong direction when it crops up.

Thomson has several novels set in his Commonwealth space universe under his belt, so he's developed a good sense of pacing and character building. His own experience in the military gives those aspects of the story solid founding, and he makes his heroes likable and villains nasty. He lays his in-crew banter on a little thick and makes his narrative more self-aware of it than it really should be.

But his smartest idea is to build each Dunmoore novel around a central mystery. In some cases it's a literal whodunit, in others the need to reconstruct events; either way it puts a lot more gas in the motor than just a string of battles and confrontations. The Shrehari antagonists don't show up in every book, but even they get enough backstory to make us respect Dunmoore's primary nemesis, Brakal.

Thomson has two other series set in this universe, but so far the five Dunmoore novels have them both beat. They also help set Siobhan among the ranks of fine space skippers worth spending a few afternoons with.

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Historical fiction, particularly that centering on the wooden walls of Great Britain during its conflicts with France, also benefits from the greater opportunities e-publishing provides. Books can come out much more quickly as well; between July 2014 and April 2018 Andrew Wareham offered the fourteen-book "Duty and Destiny" series following Sir Frederick Harris while also publishing entries in at least two other series over most of that time.

Enough such novels arrive that the reader might think His Majesty's Navy was crewed by none other than fictional officers, so a wise writer might shift his scene a little in order to stand out from the rest. Chris Durbin does exactly that, setting his "Carlisle and Holbrooke" series during an earlier iteration of the Anglo-French conflict: the middle of the 18th century. There is no heroic Nelson, no magnificent Trafalgar victory and no Napoleon overshadowing things -- in fact, this is the time that will produce those men and events and its interesting to see the foreshadowing crop up.

Durbin also makes one character, post-Captain Thomas Carlisle, a Virginian. The insular closed society of naval command isn't entirely sure what to think of this colonial outsider, and is often not at all welcoming to him. His First Lieutenant, George Holbrooke, began the series not particularly committed to the Navy as a career except he had failed at most others but has grown in stature, authority and wisdom by the time we open The Jamaica Station, the third book in the series.

Carlisle and Holbrooke, aboard HMS Medina, rescue a Spanish colonial governor while patrolling the waters around Jamaica in a search for pirates and French privateers. Although superficially friendly and obviously thankful, the Spanish official is clearly hiding something. With the help of Lady Chiara, Carlisle's wife, the secret is uncovered, but it still has heavy consequences. When Carlilse is wounded, Holbrooke takes command of Medina to continue the cruise and await the chance to raid an enemy convoy, striking a bold alliance with two English privateers to do so.

In Station, Durbin gives Holbrooke center stage for much of the book, as he did with Carlisle in an earlier series volume. It's a wise choice, allowing the series to unfold a little more deliberately and giving us two different points of view during similar events. The experienced Carlisle handles combat one way while the younger and more impetuous Holbrooke acts differently. Thus a ship-to-ship action is not just a cut-and-paste of the thunder of guns and flying splinters but is given a different life when seen through different eyes.

Durbin is also a deft hand at character sketching, bringing Carlisle, Holbrooke, Chiara and others to life with realistic interior thoughts and winsome manners. He knows how and when to wax witty in a manner matching his time period and its people, and if the whole geography and history of who is one whose side and where sometimes seems cloudy in The Jamaica Station, it was probably more than a little blurred from time to time for those living the events, as well. Durbin has published three Carlisle and Holbrooke novels in just more than a year, so those hooked on the pair's adventures will probably not have to wait long to set sail with them again.