Leeward (Nightingale & Courtney, 1)
At the decisive moment in the ferocious Battle of Aboukir Bay in 1798, Captain Hiram Nightingale is on the burning deck of his ship. His eyes are full of shrapnel, his beloved lieutenant is dead, and Nightingale’s ship has been near-destroyed by his action against the French flagship, L’Orient. Two years later, in a crisis of confidence, he sets sail to take up a post in the newly British Trinidad; but before he gets there, he is unexpectedly commissioned with HMS Scylla and tasked to track down the Ulysses, stolen by mutineers. When he discovers that this ship had been secretly laden with gold intended for the independent slave state of Haiti, Nightingale worries what else his superiors are not telling him. The captain must navigate his emotional life – old feelings triggered by an uneasy yet magnetic relationship with his new Lieutenant – as well as the hidden traps being laid by others for their own gain. Nightingale ultimately must decide the fate of the gold and of the mutineers.
In many ways, this is an enjoyable seafaring tale, alive with scenes of the running up of royals and t’gallants sails, of tar and paint and canvas. But in Part One, we are in a dead calm caused by Nightingale’s fretting; tensions feel forced, and it is hard to marry the warship commander with his interior monologue. His anxieties are rather too mysterious, and the reader’s enlightenment is provided at a cost to the narrative drive. Characters drag too many stage directions around. The mutineer Jane promises much, but too soon fades into a sketch. Daysh does write brilliantly of sea battles, fogs, and storms, which is the most accomplished aspect of this debut queer novel, and much more persuasive than the gentle romance of Nightingale’s journey to self-acceptance.
