|
| Captain's Surrender | 
 enlarge | Author: Alex Beecroft
Publisher: Linden Bay Romance
Category: Book
Buy New: $12.99
New (1) Used (4) from $9.99
Avg. Customer Rating:  16 reviews
Sales Rank: 307614
Media: Paperback
Pages: 194
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8 x 5 x 0.5
ISBN: 1602020892
Dewey Decimal Number: 813
EAN: 9781602020894
ASIN: 1602020892
Publication Date: January 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
|
| Also Available In:
|
| Similar Items:
|
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Ambitious and handsome, Joshua Andrews had always valued his life too much to take unnecessary risks. Then he laid eyes on the elegant picture of perfection that is Peter Kenyon. Soon to be promoted to captain, Peter Kenyon is the darling of the Bermuda garrison. With a string of successes behind him and a suitable bride lined up to share his future, Peter seems completely out of reach to Joshua. But when the two men are thrown together to serve during a long voyage under a sadistic commander with a mutinous crew, they discover unexpected friendship. As the tension on board their vessel heats up, the closeness they feel for one another intensifies and both officers find themselves unable to rein in their passion. Let yourself be transported back to a time when love between two men in the British Navy was punishable by death, and to a story about love, about honor, but most of all, about a Captain-s Surrender.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 11 more reviews...
Captain's Surrender- A Joyfully Recommended Title February 5, 2008
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
The year is 1779. Welcome aboard the Nimrod where 793 crewmen and 45 officers serve under the tyrannical Captain Walker. Be forewarned, do your duty and trust no one, as the Captain's spies could be any one of your crewmates. Punishments vary from five dozen to twenty dozen lashes, handed out for infractions such as being the last one down from the booms, speaking in Irish, any perceived disrespect towards the Captain, or slovenliness in completing assigned tasks. The next step for the crew is mutiny.
Amidst these trying times, Joshua Andrews, a young handsome gay twenty-year-old meets soon to be promoted to captain, Peter Kenyon on the voyage to the British Bermuda Garrison. Peter has a promising Navy career path and marriage on his horizons. In a world where same sex relationships are punishable by death, Joshua and Peter are drawn together first by friendship and then by desire, and later torn apart by society and circumstances.
Alex Beecroft has written a truly engrossing tale of life in the British Navy. The story is written with seamanship expertness that puts the reader in the middle of the action. In Captain's Surrender, the bounds of honor, loyalty, fidelity and love are all tested and divergent paths and possibilities are explored for both Joshua and Peter. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and look forward to more from Alex Beecroft.
Beth Anne
reviewed for Joyfully Reviewed
 What if Aubrey and Maturin weren't just good friends? February 17, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Reading Alex Beecroft's debut novel, CAPTAIN'S SURRENDER, one thing is for certain - Ms. Beecroft is a fan of Patrick O'Brien's MASTER AND COMMANDER series. She lovingly pays tribute to O'Brien's style, but thankfully not his linguistic authenticity that requires one to consult an 18th century naval manual for translation. Beecroft's language is simpler and makes for an easy, enjoyable read.
Peter Kenyon comes on board the Nimrod to take the place of the recently executed-for-sodomy first officer. The assignment is temporary as he is to be given his own command once they reach Bermuda. The captain of the ship is a barbaric tyrant that makes Captain Bligh look like a swell guy. Peter is forced to share quarters with midshipman Joshua Andrews. Peter takes Joshua into his confidence about his mutinous contemplations, and Joshua confides his amorous attraction to Peter. Once they reach Bermuda, they begin a love relationship, but each understands that it is only a temporary arrangement. I won't reveal any more of the plot so as not to spoil the outcome.
The author has chosen a unique method to convey the story. Using multiple points of view is a common writing style, but for the first half of the book, Beecroft relegates a different point of view for each chapter. It works quite well in that you can see the contrast of how Peter and Joshua are perceived by other characters to what is really going on inside their heads. Nevertheless, I found myself looking forward to the chapters that featured the point of view of one of the two lovers. The second half of the book was more traditional in its point of view shifts with the majority being assigned to Josh or Peter.
Where the novel really shines is in its historical texture. Beecroft has really done her homework here. The luscious descriptions of the decks and sails, the smells of battle, all give you just enough information to clearly picture it without overwhelming you with extraneous details. Dialogue is also very authentic. I particularly love the way she paints the goriest details of battle while having shipmates so desensitized that they even make humorous jokes about the carnage.
Another well written passage occurs near the end where Peter wanders the deserted village late at night while he struggles with his inner demons. I was reminded of Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady or Gaston Lachaille in Gigi as they wandered the streets in soliloquy at the end of those movies. However Peter's thought process is much baser as he has some truly ugly thoughts at this point.
It's also refreshing that the erotic factor is kept in check. Of late it appears that the women m/m writers are much less bashful about explicit sex than we gay male writers are, so it's nice that Beecroft chose not to go full erotica.
I hesitate to mention one minor inaccuracy - the biblical quotes spoken by the Reverend are taken from the New International Version rather than the King James Version (with all its "thee"s and "thou"s) which would be the only English-language translation of the bible that existed in 1779. The modern language of the newer translation felt really out of place.
All in all Alex Beecroft has written a wonderful age-of-sail novel that can be enjoyed by fans of sea stories or m/m romance.
Beautiful. May 27, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
I almost didn't buy this book. The cover was a decided turn-off.
But then I read some enthusiastic reviews for it and finally had to read the book for myself, to know if it was really that good.
It is.
The cover might lead you to believe this is just another raunchy, endless-sex-scene-every-other-page gay "romance" (emphasis not so much on the romance). Ignore the cover! It doesn't even come close to living up to the story within.
Captain's Surrender is a romance for those of us who are unabashedly romantic at heart and know a good love story when we read it. From first glance, Joshua falls head over heels with Peter, and so did I. Peter's handsome, as well as immediately likeable. But he's also wonderfully flawed--a little arrogant and too placidly confident that he always knows what's expected of him and that he's entirely capable of living up to everyone's expectations, including his own. It takes a self-aware and emotional man like Joshua to shake Peter to the core and upset his tidy world-view. Joshua's the wiser, but more vulnerable in a way, because he is afraid to let himself think he's capable of falling in love. He has seen himself as something perverse for so long, his feelings for Peter are a revelation--and his vulnerability in that regard endears him utterly to the reader. He falls first and falls hard--and the reader hopes desperately with him that his love doesn't go unrequited.
Peter's got plenty to deal with, himself, in trying to fend off both a potential mutiny aboard ship and the matchmaking efforts of a friend hoping to marry off his only child to the dashing, eligible lieutenant. Usually I dislike female characters in gay romance novels. They are usually either obnoxious BFFs of the main characters or they are overbearing relatives, usually moms who can't quit meddling. In Captain's Surrender, I am happy to say that Emily was a breath of fresh, feminine air. She was independent without being obnoxious about it, and still innocent and vulnerable without being the damsel-in-distress. She came across like a real woman of her time period and I liked her and rooted for her and wondered how the author would work it out that no hearts ended up broken.
One particular appeal of this novel is that it does have its unpredictable twists. Just when you think it will go a certain way, it goes another, and keeps you reading to find out where the new path will lead. All the characters, including secondary ones, are so well-rounded, I could easily visualize them and understand what drove each one, even when their mindsets led them to choices that were maddening or exasperating. That's another strength of the book. The author's characters live in *their* world, in their time period, and they respond to each other and the rest of society accordingly. It makes for some powerfully affecting and interesting situations, particularly for Peter.
One other thing I must mention--if you love lyrical prose and description that makes another time period come to life all around you as you read--then you will thoroughly enjoy this book. I adored the descriptions of time and place. The author can turn a phrase with that kind of rare beauty that makes you want to stop for an instant and re-read just to savor the way it is written.
There was very little I didn't like about the book. One thing I would've liked more of was the developing relationship between Josh and Peter early on. The author gives some of it in a flashback-y way that, while evocative and romantic, only left me wishing for more details of their courtship, as secret as it was and had to be. I also had some trouble following a lot of the nautical terms, but this is the first real sea story I've ever read, apart from YA books twenty years ago, so I am not up on the lingo. More experienced readers would probably follow it just fine. It was a little too much for me and I had to do some re-reading to figure out what was going on in the big battle scenes. The depth and care with which details are included do immerse you wonderfully into the story. I am also extremely appreciative of certain details left out, namely long, graphic sex scenes. The intimacy in Captain's Surrender is tender, sexy, sweet, and just exactly right.
One more thing--in case the publisher reads Amazon author reviews. Dear Linden Bay: How about a romantic, elegant, beautiful cover to go with a romantic, elegant, beautiful book? You are obviously capable of signing up first-class writers. It'd be great if you provided covers worthy of their stories. You might also want to look more closely at the formatting, because it was somewhat off in places, in the copy I received.
A beautiful Age of Sail novel March 25, 2008
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
Ok, I only had a few hours sleep last night, because I couldn't put this book away until I had finished it, and now that I'm at work I can't concentrate properly, because Josh and Peter constantly pop up in my head. So why should I say something nice about this book?
Just kidding. This is a great book. After just a few pages I was set back to a time when boarding a ship to the Caribbean had nothing to do with a journey on a luxury cruise ship, but with one on which you could very well die. I'm no expert on sea stories but in my opinion Alex Beecroft did a great job with her description of the life on a brig or frigat. The atmosphere is so dense that you can nearly touch the wood or smell the gunpowder.
Especially in the first chapters this also made me squirm a bit, because the book starts off with an execution, which is the reason the two main characters meet, and a lot of punishments like floggings follow. Alex Beecroft proves her love for details also in these scenes. But these descriptions doesn't seem to be exaggerated, but a detailed image of the atmosphere of brutality and terror on some of the naval ships in these times and thus are an integral part of the overall mood in which the main characters get to know each other.
The relationship between the main characters Josh and Peter starts off slowly. It's first a friendship which deepens on their journey to Bermuda and then becomes a love relationship. The struggle of both characters with their love for each other in a time in which it was forbidden and punishable is perfectly carved out. Josh is mostly concerned about Peter, of hurting him, of denying him the possibility to marry and lead a "normal" life. Peter is mostly concerned about himself, of not doing what is expected of him from his superiors, from society, from God.
Altogether this is a beautiful romance set in the Age of Sail and definitely a must read. By the way, here's a tip for anyone who isn't satisfied with the erotic factor of the book, even though the love scenes in the book were in my opinion very romantic and beautiful. Alex Beecroft wrote a free story with Josh and Peter called "Insubordination". You can find a download link here on her blog or on her homepage. I'll just say: Hot! ;-)
 Didn't Believe the Romance August 11, 2008
4 out of 7 found this review helpful
I had high (perhaps too high) expectations for this novel, and ordered it expecting a high seas naval romance. The author can obviously tell a story, but I felt no genuine emotional investment between the two main characters. And it took Kenyan until the end of the book to decide to be happy with Andrews, rather than do what was expected of him. Understandable given the laws at that time, but still. I was disappointed but maybe the book is too cerebral for this reviewer.
|
|
|
Powered by Associate-O-Matic
| |
