Captain Lucien Dumaine is directed to France by the Orthodox Church in an alliance with Cardinal Richelieu on the political chess-board and immediately sails to Europe, receiving a grand welcome. His Red Eminence, Cardinal Richelieu, orders his new privateers to sail to the Spanish Main, pirating in the Caribbean.
The Captain and crew sail to the Caribbean and join with the infamous Brethren of the Coast, where the Wolf plans a heist of Spain’s major shipping port at Vera Cruz, Mexico. The ship, the Vengeance, deals with a hurricane leaving the Spanish Main, but escape "the storm in a teacup" and are welcomed back to Paris with praise by Richelieu.
In the Gardens of Chateau-Versailles, attending a gala in his honor, the Wolf meets Lady Seafourthe and her partner, Nanciene Duvalier, owners of the Joyful Widows, the most fashionable and celebrated apparel salon at Paris. She presents the Wolf with a sailing contract to voyage unto the China Seas to garner silk and corner the market in Europe. The Wolf defends the ladies from being assaulted in the gardens, when Lynden and Lucien are struck by the lightning bolt of love.
In ripe period prose touched with mythic grandeur (“He took the relinquished sword of the enemy, received all information, and skewered them with their own Toledo steel”), the Wolf and his crew, rich after their Tripoli adventures in the first book, set sail for the Americas, chartered to “rob and destroy the galleons of Spain and all others save for the Dutch” to feed the coffers of a France facing wars and internal unrest. McKenzie’s episodic plot involves a new scheme, this time at Vera Cruz, where the Wolf, as always, charts the boldest course, asking “Why risk our necks taking ship by ship when we can claim it all?”
McKenzie’s Wolf novels are hefty, written in a playfully archaic style that, at best, will quicken the blood of readers with a taste for adventure tales written before the 20th century. At worst, some sentences prove challenging to parse, and their length makes it frustrating to reread to catch their meaning. Still, McKenzie has committed to something too rare in adventure fiction: he includes only the good parts, the triumphs and soirees, weddings and romance and historical encounters, some positive depictions of Indigenous peoples and sharp musings about the abuse of religious power, and a love of liberty, skullduggery, battles, and rousing speeches and confrontations.
Takeaway: Historical high-seas adventures in a grand, mythic style.
Comparable Titles: Howard Pyle, William Hope Hodgson.
Production grades
Cover: A-
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: C+
Marketing copy: A-
