Muskets & Dreams
The plot line of Muskets & Dreams is quite simple: Nathaniel Devarre, former pirate and companion of Henry Morgan, encounters Elizabeth Rawlins, wife to Godfrey Rawlins who had married her following the death of her fiancé, Sir Roger Trevanyon. However, Nathaniel reveals the truth to Elizabeth that Roger had not died during the Civil War and that she had been misinformed. She asks Nathaniel to take her to see Roger without her husband’s knowledge and Nathaniel reluctantly agrees. What happens next is not exactly what you might expect and the story rattles on at quite a pace.
And herein lies the problem: at eighty-three pages, the book is woefully short and, even given that my copy is a hardback version, surely must be considered to be overpriced? This is the third of the series and I have not had sight of the previous two volumes to know if they were as short as this or not and, I must admit, I was constantly wondering how our hero could have had his eye shot out in a duel and survived.
Having said that, the writing is good, the characters believable and the cover decent enough, but I was left with the feeling that much more could have been made of the plot and characters and that the author wanted to reach his – albeit unexpected – ending rather too quickly. Maybe amalgamate the three stories to make a continuous cracking good lengthy read?
