Corsair - Tim Severin

The first of the four volume adventures of Hector Lynch, I had high expectations of the book as I loved Tim`s work in both the Viking as well as the Saxon series.

And of course, the fact this is set in about the same era of Black Sails, will make this popular books for the today generation.

Plot 

Hector is a young irish boy who, together with his sister Elysabeth, has been taken in a village raid by the notable corsair Hakim Reis.  This lands him in the Barrios of Algiers, where he befriends a Miskito called dan.

Together, they convert to the Islam for the sole purpose of making their life easier, and they manage to work themselves up to join the raid of a renowned captain and their owner.  However, the vessel is captured by a french Man-o-War and they are forced to man the oars on a galley, the St Gerassimus, who will conduct trials with an experimental mortar.

This goes wrong bigtime, and they are freed by the Emperor of Morocco.  Here he becomes responsible for building the emperor one of those cannons, and he learns about the fate of his missing sister.  Realizing the shocking truth, he crosses the Great Desert with his friends Dan and Jacques, an ex oarsman, and set sail to the Carribees.

Opinion

While not as throat gripping as the first volume of the Viking series, the book is a highly enjoyable reading.  It follows fictional characters and their first two years of adventure and travels against a historical background of both events and people.

If you are into the Black Sails craze, be sure to pick them up and have a good time reading it!