Antoine Vanner is the Tom Clancy of
historic naval fiction. This is a techno-thriller in the true Clancy
nuts-and-bolts style, except that it is placed in the late nineteenth century,
during the transition from sail to steam, instead of in the nuclear-powered
present.
Where the followers of C. S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian luxuriate in
the crack and rattle of canvas, and the niceties of getting a wind-driven ship
into battle, author Vanner revels in the throwing power of cannon, propulsive
power of engines, and weight of armor plating. It is all very detailed,
tremendously impressive, and very convincing.
The same depth of research has gone into
the background of the decline and fall of the Ottoman Empire. Vanner hurls his
protagonist, Nicholas Dawlish, into the forefront of the bloodiest battles
between the Christian Russian invaders and the Moslem Turks.
While Britain is
theoretically neutral, and the Turks are international lepers after the
wholesale butchery of Bulgarian Christians, it is important to British
commercial interests that the Russian Czar does not get the chance to dominate
British trade routes by occupying Constantinople. Therefore Dawlish, vulnerable
because he so ambitious for advancement in the Royal Navy, is coerced into signing
up with the Ottoman Navy.
His mission: to seize a gunboat, and wreak havoc on
the Russian supply lines in the Black Sea. After that, the action is hot and
hectic, rather unusually spaced between the quarterdeck and the stokers in the
lowest hold. Though they succeed in an unexpected way, the approach to the
story provides an insight into Dawlish’s job, rank, and state of mind.
His mission then becomes rather
unusual. He has to place the ironclad’s
cannon on land, in the path of the Russian thrust on Istanbul. Once this
appallingly difficult task carried out, he is impelled toward Plevna, where the
Turks are making their last despairing stand, to rescue the woman he is coming
to love, along with her misguided Nightingale-type mistress. He gets to her
side, only to face overwhelming forces.
Bloodshed—much bloodshed—follows. But, thankfully, while Vanner is
describing a really brutal part of history, he does not wallow in violence.
Intelligently, he leaves the worst of the atrocities to the reader’s
imagination.
The major part of the story happens between
December 1877, when Plevna falls, and the compact between the major powers that
settled the war politically in March 1788.
In between, is winter—a winter that is unimaginably brutal, and yet the
writer makes the reader experience every detail of the horror. What this reader
came out with is a huge admiration of the soldiers and seamen who underwent the
ordeal, along with a contempt of the politicians who engineered it.
The motif throughout is Dawlish’s growing
love affair. The social strictures
surrounding it are authentic of the age, as anyone who has watched Downton
Abbey will attest. The resolution is rather hastily engineered, however, which
is the reason this review gets four stars rather than the five it really
demands. The moment when Dawlish succumbs to his better feelings deserved more
space.
Otherwise, a hugely recommended book, particularly for technically
minded maritime fiction fans, and anyone who was addicted to Clancy. Most
unusually, I was so engrossed by the driving force of the story that I didn’t
pause to hit google or even look up an encyclopedia to find out the background
of what Vanner was describing so vividly.
Britannia’s Wolf should be a
bestseller, and it is an indictment of the traditional publishing world that it
is an Indie book.
