Under Siege
Low Countries, summer 1708. Captain Daniel Rawson, who rose from the ranks to the Duke of Marlborough’s staff, is happy with his career, his love life, and even his latest dangerous assignment: spiriting away from the French town of Lille the plans of its supposedly impregnable fortifications. Infiltrating the place with the help of a cheeky camp follower is easy enough, but then things become… interesting. Meanwhile, Daniel’s Dutch fiancée Amalia, on her way to England with her tapestry-maker father, is in for quite some trouble of her own. Will Daniel succeed? Will the lovers be reunited? Will Lille capitulate under the siege of the Allied troops?
This fourth instalment in the Captain Rawson series is an adventure filled with peril, love, intrigue, and all the gleeful disregard for plausibility of a Boy’s Own Adventure. Bi-dimensional characters who act on scant motivation, the occasional error (strategy mistaken for tactics, serendipity mentioned several decades before Walpole even coined the word…) and a lot of awkward, expository dialogue do much to spoil what could have been a fun adventure set in an interesting period. Rather disappointing – and I have to wonder who chose the cover art, depicting uniforms of the Napoleonic era.
