Birds Of Prey (The Courtneys)

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We are caught up in a broad historical sweep, nothing less than the destabilisation of one entire continent . Seriously, every time Smith (literally) had her thighs getting all slippery when she thought about dudes getting hung or tortured I had to shake my head in bewildered wonderment. A sombre new mood began to infect the ship as the company realized that their forces, puny before, had been more than halved in a single stroke. Hal could sense anger in the set of his shoulders and the way in which he slammed the instrument shut and tossed his mane of black hair. Some picked out Hal's virile broad-shouldered figure and shouted unintelligible invitations to him, making their meanings plain by the lewd gestures that accompanied them" (p.

Those five tardy ships, still straggling across the Ocean of the Indies, must round the Cape before the southeasterly trades fell away and the wind turned foul into the north-west. By the time of his death in 2021 he had published 49 books and had sold more than 140 million copies. The books I have read by him range from exciting action packed thrillers to occasionally cliche ridden stories of cringe worthy sex and violence. He had studied the great interior spaces, filled with drawings of elephants and lions and monsters, traced the outlines of the Mountains of the Moon, and of lakes and mighty rivers confidently emblazoned with names such as ‘Khoikhoi’, and ‘Camdeboo’, ‘Sofala’ and ‘the Kingdom of Prester John’. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average.Already they had waited sixty-five tedious days, beating monotonously back and forth, but today the Dutchmen might come, and Hal stared out into the gathering day with parted lips and straining green eyes. Set in the East African coast during the Anglo Dutch war, I felt like I was lost in an old pirate film with everything that goes with it: tragedy, love stories, murder and manslaughter, villains and heroes. The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network. After four years away from service, master mariner Sir Hal Courtney prepares for his latest and most dangerous voyage – a death or glory mission in the name of Empire and the crown. Blood enemies from their first boyhood encounter, Manfred De La Rey and Shasa Courtney find themselves adversaries in a war of age-old savagery to seize the sword of power in their land.

Wilbur Smith has done it again, a thrilling roller coaster of a novel, full of adventure and action, and packed with characters you will either love or loath as it journeys along the African coast in a time when the world was a different, simpler place. Within the waters of the northern continent, acts of piracy, rapine and murder – whose perpetrator previously would have been hunted down by the combined navies of Christian Europe and hanged from his own yard-arm – were condoned and even applauded when committed beyond the Line. He made out the others’ sails then exactly where they should be, tiny pale flecks against the dark sea. Sir Francis Courtney, his son Hal, and their crew are carried around the southern tip of the African colonies by the good ship Lady Edwinna, licensed to attack and seize the treasure-laden ships of the Dutch East India company.The main sail filled with a boom like the discharge of cannon, she heeled eagerly to the south-easter and pressed her shoulder into the next blue swell, bursting it asunder. Transporting readers back to 1667, the Anglo-Dutch naval war is at its zenith as Sir Francis Courtney and his son, Henry (Hal), sail off the coast of southern Africa. Hal soon learns that leading a crew is more complex than he first thought and that protecting the innocent, particularly his fellow Christians, is death-defying. Took me back to amy teenage years of reading when characters did not need to be fleshed out and adventures just keep happening on the seas. At the farthest edges of the known world, the mighty East India Trading Company suffers catastrophic losses from pirates on the high seas.

The stirring strains of ‘Farewell to the Isles’ carried across the water to the Lady Edwina, as the Buzzard’s topmast men clambered like monkeys high into the rigging, and loosed the reefs. Even from his seat at the masthead Hal could hear the pumps labouring in both vessels to lower the bilges. He led prayers twice a day and exhorted his seamen to gentle and dignified behaviour when they put into port – although Hal knew that this advice was seldom followed.yours isn't the stuff of literary legend, but usually you buckle a *mean* swash and cause images of Erroll Flynn to dash around your reader's head (thanks for that, BTW). It is a prequel to the Courtney saga and follows the fortunes of Hal Courtney and is set in the 1660’s. The hull throbbed and resonated to a different impulse as she swung round and went plunging away back into the west. it was entertaining, and there was a lot of adventure, though it was a bit of slow reading because no character truly caught me so I didn't really feel like reading it.

He watched the leading bird dip and turn, breaking the pattern, and twist its head to peer down into the dark waters. I’m kind of wondering at this point why I slept for so long on Smith’s books as they are thoroughly entertaining and, if not classic literature, written well. There’s just always another fun scene of derring-do, lurid sex, or historical tidbittery lurking around the next corner.He moves the Courtney name to its earlier ancestors, tracing their strength and determination through the skills Hal exemplifies throughout the novel.