Niagara Squadron, Chris Durbin

Ships coming close to land must be careful, as underwater rocks and shoals may lurk invisibly in what seems like a clear path to harbor. Authors who write naval fiction sometimes find themselves in similar situations, as their sure hand at nautical terminology and narrative deserts them when their cast goes ashore and they founder faster than a broached longboat.

Chris Durbin manages to keep his story afloat in Niagara Squadron even while he sends one of his two heroes, Commander George Holbrooke, overland with the British Army's 1759 Niagara Expedition to dislodge the French from Ontario and capture access to Canada. It's unfamiliar territory to Holbrooke, who has been distinguishing himself at sea in this campaign during what's sometimes called the Seven Years War but is now an a very different element. The goal of the campaign is to attack French holdings on Lake Ontario by coming via river and overland to both assault Fort Niagara and provide naval support for the attack.

Although Durbin has offered up a goodly amount of history as he's navigated his heroes on their journeys, Niagara Squadron offers more than just about any volume in the series so far. He follows the actual journey to the lake and the eventual battle fairly closely, exploiting a few gaps in the historical record as places where Holbrooke and his crew can shine and carry the day. He does a good job of outlining some of the early inter-service rivalry between army and navy and shows how the tactics of land movement with sea support were still very much in development.

He also highlights how the cultural gap between the European combatants, both French and English, and their native allies meant that the Europeans never really understood how the different native tribal nations related to each other or chose the side to fight on that they did. Holbrooke is given a development arc of gradually accepting friendship of the Mohawk warrior Kanatase and recognizing him as a man of honor and good character instead of just a "savage." The chapters relating the detached expedition of Holbrooke's first lieutenant, Charles Lynton, offer a neat kind of mirror of seeing how Holbrooke now handles being on the other side of the superior/subordinate relationship, having begun the series as subordinate to its other hero, Edward Carlisle. And the whole story provides a domestic reason for Holbrooke to mature, as he must convince Martin Featherstone that he is a worthy suitor for his daughter Ann.

All of the Carlisle and Holbrooke stories have been excellent reads for the naval fiction fan, all the better for passing over the well-trodden path of the Napoleonic wars for the earlier mid-18th century conflict. But Niagara Squadron's many virtues give it the edge so far if one's looking to crown the top entry of the series.