The Bright and Breaking Sea (A Captain Kit Brightling Novel)
This, the start of a series, is historical fantasy that reimagines the Napoleonic Wars in an alternate world where magic runs along ley lines, ‘currents of power that feathered through the world’ and can be felt by those who are ‘Aligned’. They can use it, but the effects are dangerous and unpredictable. Society is multi-racial, and names are changed: England becomes the Saxon Isles, ruled by Queen Charlotte; Gerard is the Gallic emperor in exile at Montgraf. Despite lingering prejudice, women have a measure of equality and serve in the military. Kit Brightling, the protagonist, is not only Aligned, but a captain in the Isles’ navy. Though a foundling, she was reared with a group of other talented girls who have become her sisters.
Despite the presence of such familiar Regency motifs as aristocratic snobbery, a wastrel younger brother with gambling debts, and the shift of the protagonists’ initial antagonism to growing affection, this is a fast-paced tale of high adventure, featuring naval battles, the rescue of a prisoner from a pirate stronghold, the hunt for traitors. And heroes, male and female both, with superior talents to get the job done. The writing is taut and witty.
Strongly recommended.
