50books_poc | 'Jupiter Amidships' by ST Martin (Reply)

'Jupiter Amidships' is a sequal to 'Jupiter Williams', which I reviewed here. This time, the arrogant young hero of Jupiter Williams finds himself press ganged into naval service, and serves on board a British naval ship around the turn of the 18th/19th century.

First of all, this is a really really good book. The characters are well drawn, Jupiter is wonderfully flawed, as ever, and the depiction of the 18th century British navy is unflinching in its accuracy. There's not a lot of romanticisation here - you see it in all its bloody brutality.

Having said that, I struggled with this book a little at times. The first book was very 'boys own' adventure, and this one even more so. In fact, as far as I'm aware, there wasn't a single female character in the book. Of course, this makes sense for a book set entirely on board a ship, but it was something that I vaguely felt the lack of. It was also a very tough book - it kept pressing on, with more and more awful things happening to the heroes and it doesn't let up very much. This isn't unreasonable, considering the context of the story, but at times I did feel a bit like I just desperately wanted to give the poor kid a break! And yet, at the end he is talking about going back into the Royal Navy instead of staying in Sierra Leone, which mildly blew my mind.

As in the case of the last book, I really hope there's a sequel. I think there might be. The story does definitely seem wide open for one.