2021/107: To Glory Arise -- Walter Jon Williams

[tamaranth]

2021/107: To Glory Arise -- Walter Jon Williams

Privateering was not a profession for a man who held ultrafine scruples, but Malachi had hoped that the American breed would somehow be better than others, that fighting for a just cause could inspire a more upstanding brand of warfare than that inspired by tyranny. [loc. 3841]

First novel by Walter Jon Williams: not SF or fantasy, but naval, set during the American War of Independence, and written as a tie-in to the RPG Privateers and Gentlemen.

I doubt I would have stuck with this if I hadn't been reading it for book club: the opening chapters are clunky, with a lot of repetition and a sex scene that includes the phrase 'willing breasts'. It does improve a bit after that, though. The first chapters introduce the three Markham brothers -- Jehu (the one educated in England), Josiah (the religious one) and Malachi (the fun one) -- and much of the rest of the novel focusses on Malachi and his privateering adventures. There are a lot of gory naval battles (mostly against the perfidious English) but Malachi nevertheless finds time to fall in love with an English lady, Georgina, whose probing questions about his future plans can only mean that she reciprocates his feelings. Oh, wait ...

There are too many infodumps, not enough depth of character, and so much repetition that I wondered if To Glory Arise had been published in a rush, without thorough editing. I was also deeply unimpressed with the end of the novel, in which a major character is killed off in a single sentence. If I hadn't already known from his other work that Williams is an accomplished and inventive author, this novel would have convinced me not to read anything else by him.

I am, of course, spoilt by having read Patrick O'Brian at an early age: and now I want to reread some, as a palate cleanser.

Comments

[autopope]

I'm pretty sure Walter published this in the mid-1970s, shortly after he got out of the US Navy: he'd have been mid-to-late 20s at the time, I think, so definitely journeyman work. (He leveraged his naval background much more effectively in the Dread Empire space operas.)