Old fashioned naval adventure story with a lot of humour - review of "Mountain of Gold" by J.D. Davies -

The main character is a young naval captain, the second son of an earl, during the reign of King Charles the Second.

By shear luck he is able to capture a corsair galley. The captain turns out to be an Irishman who had turned Turk. This pirate is telling about a huge mountain of gold that is rumoured to be located somewhere sub Saharan and he offers to help find it. Of course hoping it will prevent him from being hanged.

Captain Quinton and his ship are dispatched back to England to inform the king but there is trouble at home.

As the captain and his Dutch wife have no children after being married for five years his mum has decided his gay older brother has to marry. But that lady is rumoured to be a black widow.

The story is a bit a mix of adventure tale and the more romance novel subjects. But it is written is such a way that it brings a grin on your face many times. The Dutch spouse who swears in very colourful Dutch (what I can understand), discriptions like compairing his mother bending over her walking sticks in her mourning cloths to a black spider (she is quite nasty). What is also good about the book that it drops a lot of historical facts as a background for the story.

I can really recommend it.

 But the publisher should make some effort and edit it. As it is full with words slurred together.

(On Amazon)



“Great naval fiction…Hornblower, Aubrey and Quinton – a pantheon of the best adventures at sea” – Conn Iggulden

1663, the Mediterranean Sea…

Captain Mathew Quinton, heir to Ravensden and his Dutch wife Cornelia tragically struggle to have children of their own. The Ravensden line is under increasing strain, as his older Brother, the tenth earl of Ravensden doesn’t have a son either.

The earl is forced into marrying the Countess Louise, and with vicious rumours circulating that she murdered her previous husbands, Captain Matthew is deeply concerned for his brother’s wellbeing.

What is the truth surrounding the beauty?

How can he stop the marriage before it is too late?

Whilst on-board his majesty’s ship The Wessex, Quinton captures a corsair pirate, who goes by the name of Omar Ibrahim of Oran right from under the nose of the ferocious Montnoir, a Maltese Knight.

Omar Ibrahim of Oran is a false identity for the notorious adventurer O’Dwyer who tells the King about ‘a mountain of gold’ to save himself from the noose.

Quinton is ordered by King Charles II to accompany the prisoner O’Dwyer to the mountain in Gambia and retrieve his riches.

The journey is anything but smooth, filled with terror, murder and betrayal…
and the question in everyone’s minds: ‘Does this mountain even exist?’

 

 

 

Praise for J D Davies

‘Exciting, emotive and utterly convincing, the Quinton Journals lead the field in naval historical fiction” – Sam Willis, TV presenter and bestselling author of The Glorious First of June

“Finely shaded characters, excellent plotting, gut-clenching action and immaculate attention to period naval detail…these are superb books” – Angus Donald, author of The Outlaw Chronicles

“A splendid addition to nautical adventure, and a grand story, to boot!” — Dewey Lambdin, author of the Alan Lewrie series.

“J D Davies’s depiction of Restoration England and the British navy is impeccable, his characters truly live and breathe, and the plot kept me in suspense. I could not recommend it more” — Edward Chupack

Born in Wales in 1957, J D Davies was educated at Llanelli Grammar School and Jesus College, Oxford, where he completed a doctorate in 17th century naval history. He taught History for thirty years, chiefly at Bedford Modern School, where he also served as a Deputy Headmaster. He won the Samuel Pepys prize in 2009 for his book, Pepys's Navy: Ships, Men and Warfare 1649-89, and is also a previous winner of the Julian Corbett prize for naval history. His acclaimed series of naval historical fiction, The Journals of Matthew Quinton, has been published in the UK, North America and Germany. David is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and a former Chairman of the Naval Dockyards Society and Vice-President of the Society for Nautical Research.