The Pirate Devlin

A good first effort. Sometimes it's get hard to remember that he is not becoming the "Dread Pirate Roberts" from "The Princess Bride." Still a good yarn.

Whilst there may be some inaccuracies in this book they are easily overlooked as they are more deliberate than not to help readers understand what is going on.It is a great read with an excellent mix of action and intrigue

I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the series, but I wish they were available on kindle. Very believable Pirate Adventure with all the pirate ingredients you'd expect.

Recommended by an ex- navy friend. Well worth the read. Enjoyed the twists and turns. Looking forward to the sequel.

The great idea is that much of this book is based upon the rediscovered idea that pirates "had codes of honour and conduct with which they policed their democratic crews" and were in reality a much more interesting, downright intriguing bunch of people than pirate fiction of the 19th and 20th centuries would indicate. As veterans who in a time of relative peace were essentially abandoned by their governments, having been taught to commit privateering (basically legal piracy during wartime with their own government as an accomplice), facing a cruel and arguably brainless automatic penalty of death (which didn't give them much cause to even consider surrendering), and having established a far more democratic form of self-government than anything that currently existed, is it any wonder that the life appeared attractive to some, never mind the simple temptation of wealth? This rediscovered truth underlies a lot of what goes on here.Unfortunately, it is about the only great idea in the work. Contrast that with the bad ideas.First, the devaluing of female characters. The problem isn't the historical accuracy, which is beyond question, but rather the removal of a key part of the fiction. Having a bunch of male characters basically motivated by occasional visits to brothels inhabited by realistically weak prostitutes just sucks all of the romance out of the story, and while author Keating's realism is sound, his story suffers... a lot.Of considerably more importance is the poor design of the main character. Patrick Devlin could have been either a man in a desperate situation committing as little devilry as he can get away with, or he could have been a man who consciously decides (as so many real pirates decided) to go "all in". Instead he does neither, kind of swinging back and forth, being apparently willing to do whatever is necessary, but not being required by the author to do so. It feels noticeably and obviously false and contrived.However the worst idea doesn't become clear until the end, when the author reveals that rather than being a one volume story, the story goes on for at least three more volumes:  Hunt for White Gold , Blood Diamond , and  Cross of Fire , apparently written with plenty of room to continue on into further volumes. Seriously? Piracy wasn't one of those careers with much of a future, and having Patrick Devlin's career continue on this apparently endlessly, with his own Captain Ahab apparently endlessly giving chase, kind of turns it into an unintentional joke IMHO. Hunt for White GoldBlood DiamondCross of Fire