Quarterdeck

It has become a bit of a tradition that my summer holiday reading (or part of it) is one of Julian Stockwin’s Thomas Payne Kidd novels and this year was no exception. ‘Quarterdeck’ is the 5th (I think) Kydd novel and in this one Kydd has been promoted to Lieutenant and finds himself first crossing the Atlantic to North America and then having various adventures at sea and on land. This book is quite land based and seemed to be mostly trying to provide a bridge from seaman Kydd to officer Kydd. A lot of the book revolves around Kydd’s frustration that he is not a ‘gentleman’ and so unable to gain proper acceptance from his fellow officers.

These books are easy, fun reads – a kind of poor man’s Patrick O’Brian – but at times they do annoy me a bit. I find Kydd’s ‘particular friend’ – Nicholas Renzi – a particularly irritating character. In the earlier books his presence served a purpose of giving Kydd a connection to a higher thinking level that helped to develop a sense of his natural intelligence and his elevation through the ranks. In this book, Renzi is simply a bit of an oik (does anyone use that word anymore?). Still, I enjoyed the story and hopefully the next one in the series will be a bit more of a classic naval history novel.