
King's Shilling
British Military Quartet, Book 2
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Narrated by:
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John Telfer
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By:
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Mike Lunnon-Wood
About this listen
As a powerful insurgent army closes on Liberia's capital, London is forced to act, and HMS Beaufort is dispatched to West Africa to pull British nationals from the teeth of encroaching danger. But when the volatile situation ashore unravels, the frigate's crew must draw deep on reserves of skill, ingenuity and sheer bloody-mindedness to save it. And with time running out, Beaufort's Captain makes the decision to take his ship upriver....
Cover art courtesy of Crown Copyright.
©2016 Mike Lunnon-Wood (P)2017 Audible, Ltd.A Tremendous Tale
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if you like Patrick Robinson this books for you helps if you know some navy abbreviations but not a deal breaker
best book I've listened to for ages
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Does what it says on the tin
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Another tremendous tale of daring do
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Frantic!
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This book took me there
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Good, but needed…
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Unlike the standard "techno-thriller", there is much less focus on the technology and more on the story and the characters. Equally, whilst Tom Clancy or Stephen Coontz would have a single, all-conquering hero, this is an ensemble piece, but with just as much flag-waving as either could muster.
I draw the comparison with old war movies advisedly, however. Both in the writing and the narration, this really is a 1940's war movie transplanted to 1996. We may have WRENs and female officers, but the classic components of a '40s film are all, splendidly, here. We have understated officers, cheeky matelots who do something terribly brave and then exclaim that they could "murder a cup o' tea"; only to be scolded by some grizzled, salty Petty Officer who keeps it all together. As an aside for the more sensitive listener, the one allowance to "modernism" is that there is quite a lot of strong language, with the "C" word much in evidence. Nevertheless, if this were a film, Laurence Olivier would be the captain, Richard Todd would lead the shore party and John Mills would pop up to be cheery in the face of danger; "Cripes, we are going to be for it now !".
If I am honest, the narration is a bit much; it really is voiced straight out of the 1940s. Naval officers have not had accents like this since Suez. But that really is me being churlish. This is great fun, and if you are not left a bit moved by the deeply predictable ending, then I would be amazed that you had got as far as that.
Boys' Own stuff - brill !
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Enjoyable
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Excellent adventure story
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