Chanticleer Book Reviews

Tag: Action/Adventure

BRITFIELD and the LOST CROWN by C. R. Stewart – Action/Adventure, Coming of Age, Mystery/Caper

Tom and Sarah are best friends who reside in a dilapidated English orphanage housed in a 16th-century castle. Only this castle isn’t the kind that inspires romance or chivalry; Weatherly orphanage is run like a maximum-security prison where children are forced to work, creating goods that are sold in the local village.

Many orphans have tried to get beyond Weatherly’s gates and have failed. Mr. Speckle, a scurrilous caretaker, prowls the grounds, keeping constant surveillance, ensuring the children are working and staying in their place. But Tom is a daring lad, often going on “raids” to steal books from the private library of Weatherly’s owners for his friends to read. Mr. and Mrs. Grievous, a dreadful pair who frown upon any sort of learning, run the orphanage.

One day, Tom and Sarah resolve to get out of Weatherly – forever. Ahead of them, the path is long, twisting, and dangerous, filled with a whirlwind tour through the English countryside. Here, author Stewart sharpens his focus and showcases the beauty and mystery of Great Britain. Readers will discover the places that are dear to the author’s heart as Tom and Sarah travel far and wide, including places such as the Midlands, Canterbury, Windsor Castle London and many more. But trouble is always nipping at Tom and Sarah’s heels, and when the renowned Detective Gowerstone takes up the case, the pair are nearly captured. They only escape by commandeering a hot-air balloon!

As we follow them on their clandestine route, we begin to learn more about who Tom might be—and why some highly placed operatives would like to see him eliminated altogether. It all goes back 150 years to the disappearance of the mysterious Britfield dynasty and the ascendancy of Queen Victoria, leaving one to wonder, Did the wrong person get the crown?

Britfield and the Lost Crown delivers as a detailed and intriguing first-in-series read that is sure to capture the attention of the middle grade and young adult crowd and those who love the Y/A action and adventure genre. Readers journey through the English cities and countryside beautifully rendered in the narrative. The book also includes maps and intelligent background information about the setting and history with access to online illustrations and commentaries on castles, villages, and towns where our heroes visit. Overall, Britfield weaves plot, texture, storytelling, and fascinating characters into a winning combination and enriching experience for adventure fans.

April 1, 2019
TOM – The ADVENTURES of a PORTSMOUTH LAD by Tom Edwards – Memoir, Action/Adventure, Coming of Age

Tom Edwards grew up rough and never lost his yen for travel and new adventures, as shown in this wide-ranging portrait that spans numerous years and continents.

The author depicts himself through the eyes of an omniscient observer, growing up as a sailor’s son in and around the city of Portsmouth, England during the Depression era. Many scenes of his childhood speak to the poverty in which the family, his mother, sister, and brother, lived in as they rarely saw the father/husband who was mostly away at sea.

But the boy never realized they were poor until one Christmas when the better-off folk visited his neighborhood with boxes of fruit, cakes, and toys for the children. Vivid historical touches including everything from famous buildings, castles, and ships in the harbor are wrapped around childhood memories of the flannel vests slaked in camphor that children were forced to wear all winter, to the sports cards sold with cigarettes that children prized, saved, and fought over. Yet despite an absent father and a mother who seemed happy to have the old man gone, Tom chose the seafaring life.

Born in 1929, Tom was accepted at Portsmouth Technical High School, and as the war was ending, he joined the Royal Navy, beginning his roving lifestyle. He was often punished in his training stint for being a daring young man, but he also managed to compete in various sports – swimming, boating, sailing, and once – but only once, boxing.

Stationed in Ireland, he was then transferred to Malta, his first experience of a truly foreign place. That was followed by years in various countries of southern Africa and finally Australia. In those years he was married, twice, had daughters whom he loved but rarely saw as his wife kept returning to England, while he couldn’t bear the boredom of home for long.

He mined for semi-precious gems, learned to fly gliders, played water polo, started a camera magazine, headed a rescue team, battled and won a fight against tuberculosis, worked in a dynamite factory, sailed around the world, and was shipwrecked three times, became a surveyor, a painter and ran art groups in three countries, and immigrated to Australia when independence movements in Africa began to make existence difficult for the former English colonizers.

Edwards is known for his writing, his first book compellingly titled If I Should Die, composed after he joined an anti-terrorist unit in Rhodesia. His prose is colorful and well organized, and his interjections of significant events in the world add a stirring background – the abdication of Edward VIII, the coronation of Elizabeth II, the war and all its terrors told both by the history book and from the observant memory of a growing boy in a critical seaport city. Small details overlap the larger scheme of things, including a great deal of humor surrounding young men’s constant longing for, and occasional securing of, female companionship. He is careful to admit his flaws, such as his weaknesses as a husband, his incurable need to seek new adventures in new climes, and his now waning physical powers after a youth and manhood of grit and occasional glory.

Edwards has made a comfortable name for himself in several spheres and here delivers a memoir that combines the larger historical picture and a plethora of nostalgia, revealing him as both gutsy and tenderhearted.

March 27, 2019
SLAVE to FORTUNE by D.J. Munro – YA Historical Fiction, Sea Adventures Fiction, Thriller & Suspense

At the tender age fourteen, Thomas Cheke is kidnapped in the dead of night by Barbary pirates from his home on the Isle of Wight. His widowed mother and sister are left behind, but Tom doesn’t know if they survive the surprise attack. During the next six years, his life will take more twists and turns than he could ever have imagined, and the resulting story is one of the most fascinating ever put to page.

Tom addresses the reader directly, and this lends a heightened sense of immediacy and excitement to an already gripping tale. He is the most sympathetic of characters, one with the deck stacked against him, though he uses his innate intelligence and wits most effectively. After the initial night when he fell “into the hands of the Turk,” an event English schoolchildren had been taught to fear, Tom is imprisoned on a corsair ship bound for Algiers where he knows he will be sold as a slave.

Keenly observant and eager to make the best of his situation, Tom helps another lad on the boat who works in the kitchen, and along the way learns much about the running of the ship, the men aboard, prisoners and crew alike, and does what he can to comfort two other children who were also kidnapped from the Isle of Wight. Why these three youngsters were targeted by the pirates is at the heart of an intricate mystery that builds throughout the book. Meanwhile, day to day life on the boat, seen through Tom’s eyes, is fascinating, especially when the crew chases a Spanish galleon laden with silver bullion and battle ensues.

Once in Algiers, Tom maintains his composure while his ankle is chained and manacled and he is sold to Ibrahim Ali, the Grand Treasurer of the city. Many surprises await Tom as he joins the household, including his growing admiration for his Master, a kind and erudite man who arranges for his servant’s learning Arabic and intense study of the Koran. As a trusted servant, Tom runs errands for Ibrahim in cosmopolitan Algiers, the sights and sounds of which are fully brought to life through Munro’s sumptuous and masterful prose. Tom’s time on the corsair ship provided him with information that will prove very useful in his master’s solving a dire financial issue that involves the weakening value of coinage in Algiers.

Key events upend his existence once more, and he finds himself on a ship headed to Malta with a new mentor in Sir Edward Hamilton, a Christian brother and knight of the Order of St. John. With his ankle chain newly removed, Tom adjusts to life as a free man and assists Edward in solving an elaborate cipher, a lengthy message coded with the suits of playing cards. This introduces a riveting subplot concerning Cardinal Richelieu and the attempted assassinations of the Duke of Mantua and the Duke of Buckingham. Computer programmers, as well as anyone interested in code breaking, will find this section of the book enthralling. Warning the intended victims that their lives are in danger requires further travels, including a trip to Venice.

You won’t be able to turn the pages fast enough! Do Tom and Edward prevent the assassinations? Does Tom ever set foot on English soil again? What will become of the young man, twenty years of age at the book’s conclusion, who has lived in Ottoman and Christian worlds as a slave and a free man? Adults and sophisticated young adult readers will find this book exquisitely captivating.

Anyone who’s read and loved Robert Louis Stevenson’s historic adventure, Kidnapped, will no doubt also love Slave to Fortune. The basis of D.J. Munro’s thrilling adventure, Slave to Fortune, is purportedly based on an original memoir by Thomas Cheke, an Englishman who lived during the seventeenth century. In the Endnote, D.J. Munro shares the research he undertook to confirm the events in Tom’s memoir and notes, “I hope that I have done it justice.” The answer, of course, is a resounding, “YES!”

Slave to Fortune won the 2017 CIBA Grand Prize in the Dante Rossetti Awards and took First Place in the 2017 CIBA Chaucer Awards for Early Historical Fiction.

March 13, 2019
The 19th BLADESMAN, Book 1 of the Shadow Sword Series by S. J. Hartland – Epic Fantasy, Sword and Sorcery, Action/Adventure

A dark, medieval fantasy with a hopeful message from debut author, S. J. Hartland will draw attention for its atmospheric settings, evil twists, and righteous triumphs.

Lord Vraymorg is a seemingly ageless warrior whose duty is to train young bladesmen for their heavy task. These specially selected assassins, called bonded warriors, have the onerous responsibility of killing ghouls – and only ghouls – and always running the risk of being attacked. Being attacked by ghouls means certain death. And dying by ghoul is something everyone naturally wants to avoid. But something is different with Kaell, Vraymorg’s latest charge. In fact, the 19th bladesman carries a special destiny, one directed by the gods. Kaell is bright, defiant, and, though Vraymorg cannot bear to think of it, lovable, like a son. This fatherly love is the crux of the warrior lord’s struggle. How can he put this young man into harm’s way? For it is a death sentence to be trained as a warrior and pick up arms against the ghouls. Vraymorg doesn’t have it easy, and we get it.

Told from multiple points of view, Hartland’s story offers strong, masculine heroes like Kaell and Vraymorg, and intriguing feminine heroes like Rozenn, whose passion is matched by her infinite knowledge of Vraymorg’s past, and Azenor, a seer bound to Kaell in death. Even Archanin, the eerie, bloodthirsty leader of the ghouls, has his say, as he urges his band to spare Kaell’s life so that he can become one of them, a fate, perhaps, worse than death. When word comes that Kaell has died, leaving only his sword, Rozenn tells Vraymorg that the sword is a mysterious instrument with magical powers, powers that may save the lost boy, if wielded by someone who cares more for him than anyone else.

This is Hartland’s debut novel. It is a prodigious undertaking, notable for its length (more than 600 pages), and is worth the time spent, as it becomes an experience, a journey into an ancient, fabled world that beckons with echoes of Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones. Journalist Hartland has fleshed out each of the many characters and given them their place in this complex saga – and, one imagines, in the broadening tale to come, since we are told she has a sequel in the works. She has a gift for prose, proven on nearly every page.

At its heart, The 19th Bladesman examines the love of a father for an adoptive student/son he refuses to allow himself to care about, suspecting that the young man’s fate will be tragic and that his demise will come at his teacher’s hand. The mystery of Vraymorg’s relationship with Kaell and of Kaell’s indomitable will to please his mentor are the twin forces that buoy Hartland’s grandly conceived work and keep the constantly burgeoning plot afloat.

January 28, 2019
Disowned – The Red-Heeled Rebels Series Novel One by Tikiri – Women’s Adventure, Thriller/Suspense, International Crime

Spanning three continents and taking on crucial issues of child marriage and human trafficking, Disowned features a brave teen heroine struggling against international criminality with nothing but her wits and grit.

Asha, born in Tanzania, is still a child when her parents are tragically killed while on a family safari in Kenya. Within a short period of time she is transported to Goa, India, to live with relatives she has never met. Her grandmother is an angry, culture-bound crone, her aunt and cousin living, as Asha now must, under the old woman’s seemingly heartless sway.

Not yet knowing the language or the social manners of her new homeland, Asha wears her best red shoes to school. She is beaten by the schoolmistress and taunted by classmates until she finds her saving grace—cooking. Beginning with lessons learned as a child and kitchen lore picked up from her new family, she starts her own business selling cupcakes, gaining grudging respect from classmates.

When her grandmother decides to sell her off to an old man who already has a wife and has no qualms about claiming his new child-bride by rape, Asha realizes she must escape — from grandmother, from Goa, and indeed from this horrible marriage.

The road is open to a new life in Canada, but there she will find she has been sold again, this time as the virtual slave of a demented old woman whose bizarre activities soon put Asha on the run again, this time with a new friend and fellow cook named Katy. The dangers are palpable, but the girls are determined to make a new life for themselves – anywhere and by any means.

Tikiri is an entrepreneurial, adventurous self-described “recovering nomad,” and is the author of a series of Non-Fiction books in support of ambitious young women. The Rebel Journal Workbooks touch on subjects of finding your passion and making plans to reach your goal. One senses she has either personally observed or studiously researched the settings she so vividly describes – from the African veldt to the hovels of backstreet Goa.

Tikiri’s central character, Asha, is naïve but definitely not lacking in good sense or in empathy for the suffering she sees around her. Knowing little about men, she nonetheless intuits that her prospective husband would be a brute and her life in Goa an endless grind. She knows she’s made for better things and desires to help her ailing aunt and culturally trapped cousin if she can. Tikiri’s writing is skillful and creative; her storyline never flags. As she leads from twist to turn in the well-constructed plot, her reader’s attention will stay riveted on Asha’s continually escalating challenges. Female readers (from older teens to adults) will find kinship with the girls in the story and look forward to the next installment of Asha’s adventures.

A tale that sounds too real for comfort at times, Disowned, is the first book in the Red-Heeled Rebels series and presents a disturbing view of powerless, exploited women and girls in third-world countries through the hopeful eyes of a determined young woman trying to beat the odds.

January 16, 2019
PALADIN’S WAR, The Adventures of Jonathan Moore, Book 3 by Peter Greene – Historical Fiction, Y/A Action/Adventure, 19th Century

The magic of living in 19^thcentury England comes to life in the early chapters of Peter Greene’s delightful, but also exciting, story—with British Navy Midshipman Jonathan Moore and daughter of the Governor of the Bahamas, Delain Dowdeswell, enjoying the fashionable new treat of ice cream, then joining their friends and family members at the boat race in Dover on a beautiful day. Granted, that wasn’t how everyone lived, and even these special few lived daily lives far less comfortable than do most ordinary people today. But they didn’t know that.

Jonathan is the son of Admiral Nathaniel Moore, who had been imprisoned in France during the Napoleonic wars. This happenstance orphaned the boy, who lived a sorry few years on the streets of London until he was found by his father’s friend, Captain Walker. The admiral was eventually rescued, and he and Jonathan were reunited. Delain and her sisters, Penelope and Rebecca, had been sent by their parents to live with the Walkers, who, with the help of Barbara Thompson, were tasked with teaching the sisters to become ladies. That seems unlikely for the irrepressible, fourteen-year-old adventuress, Delain, who once stowed away on the HMS Poseidon, from which she fired more than one cannon shot in battle!

Shortly after the race at Dover, however, the young midshipman, also fourteen, boards the HMS Paladin, along with his former street friend Sean Flagon, soon to become a Marine captain, board the HMS Paladin, leaving their friend Delain behind as they head straight into an adventure way beyond their expectations. Not surprisingly, Delain soon finds herself in a spy adventure right in London. And perhaps not so strangely for these three musketeers, their adventures overlap.

Greene paints not only the scenes in London but those on the Mediterranean, the Adriatic, and even the Black Sea with vivid color and action. He allows us to experience life on the sailing ships of His Majesty’s Royal Navy, telling us what the officers and crew wear, what they eat, where they sleep, how they talk, and especially what they do. As Peter Greene writes in his Acknowledgments, he “hoped to create a series that would capture the excitement and thrill of being on one of His Majesty’s wind-powered warships in the [Lord] Nelson era.”

The action on the HMS Paladin, as well as her sister ship, the HMS Echo, mostly unbeknownst to each other, rise to a fever pitch as they find themselves engaged in an explosive battle not with the French, but with the Russians and even the Turks! As you might guess from the overall tone of Greene’s story, the British, at least most of them, live to return to England.

This book was such fun to read. I’m hoping Peter Greene will give us a Book Four. Meanwhile, those who haven’t read Books 1 and 2 of The Adventures of Jonathan Moore, Warship Poseidon, and Castle of Fire, as well as a number of earlier books, will have some good reading to tide them over.

January 4, 2019
WINDHOLLOW and the AXE BREAKER, Windhollows Book 3 by Trayner Bane – Children’s Books, Action/Adventure, Fantasy

Part Three of the Windhollows series takes off with a bang, as we find an evil female on our hero’s trail and a sneaky scientist up to his old nefarious tricks.

The book opens with a stirring encounter between the glimmering being who was once Billy Molskin’s girlfriend, Skylar, in a contest of wills with Nila Windhammer. Nila previously transformed the schoolgirl into a monster called the Spent of Jealousy, using Dr. Rip Stinker’s toxic Essence of Ripinum.

Into the fray comes Blast, a once-powerful creature who had been given the task of guarding Skylar. His failure makes him more determined than ever to intervene, but Nila forces him out into the Formidable Fields where he is doomed to lose his memory or his freedom. To accomplish his banishment, Nila wields the Malus wand, a gift from her father and her weapon of eternal vengeance against those who killed her parents.

Meanwhile, Stinker and his faithful pet Pootrick are entering the Silent Pass where Stinker plans to enslave its inhabitants, the nomadic Silencians. But after disabling some of them with Ripinum, he is confronted by Nila, who informs him that they have a far more important mission. They must locate Billy, who is on a quest to find a mystical staff that contains powers she wants for herself.

Billy, with help from his friends Teddy and Wendy, is indeed looking for the staff, finding clues from ancient books and soon realizes he also needs to get possession of four magic stones. Could these be connected to a bracelet of three orange cubes found by Stinker when he attacked the Spent of Hatred? Could they be the work of the immortal Stonehammer?

Billy’s determination is temporarily sapped by the lingering illness of his father, who may have a clue to the missing stone collection. When his father passes away, Billy will finally access the inner strength he needs to put the legendary weapon, Axe Breaker, to its proper use and win a momentous victory.

Fans of the Windhollows series will note this story is taking on topics of significant proportions. Themes of the death of a parent, the coming-of-age of the young hero and the hard-fought triumph over evil give this volume greater gravitas, perhaps moving it towards a perception of Billy as a kind of Beanian Hobbit: ready to take up the call to duty, even if it means putting himself in harm’s way.

All in all, this is a perfect read for those seeking adventure!

*Special note: Author Trayner Bane has a delicious recipe for BackFire Cookies on his website! He’s requesting his readers try the recipe and post a photo on the Windhollows Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheWindhollows

This book can be ordered here.

Please follow the links to read the Chanticleer Reviews for Air of Vengeance and Darkness Falls

November 21, 2018
DRAGON SPEAKER – Book One of The Shadow War Saga by Elana A. Mugdan – Fantasy, Family Saga, Action/Adventure

Dragon Speaker, Book One of The Shadow War Saga by Elana A. Mugdan won the CIBA 2018 Grand Prize in the OZMA Awards for Fantasy Books! Congratulations!

A young girl is charged with rescuing a dragon and, ultimately, saves her world in this wide-reaching fantasy conception of love, war, danger, and magic. Massive amounts of magic!

Keriya is a simple girl of no great pedigree who lives in Aeria where everyone except her wields some form of magic. At age 14, she knows she will not be selected to prove herself worthy of a greater destiny in the annual Ceremony of Choice. But she has to try. Even though the consequences of failure will be a life of slavery, she yearns for the opportunity. She approaches the selection committee and begs ─no, demands ─ a chance.

Like the others chosen in the Ceremony, she goes alone into the forest to seek her destiny. There she meets the great god Shivnath who assigns her the task of locating and protecting the last of the dragons, Thorion. She must fight against the most pervasive evil; a monstrously powerful force named Necrovar, skulking in the land of Allentria. In giving her the necessary, but unnamed, gifts to accomplish the task, Shivnath gives her shining purple eyes that mark her as unique, perhaps dangerously so.

However, no one believes Keriya’s claim that Shivnath has given her the ability to fight Necrovar without help. But Keriya knows her destiny. She takes the name Soulstar to give herself inner strength, and the adventure begins.

Keriya’s journey is longer and more crooked than she had envisioned, and soon she is joined by her childhood rival, Roxanne who has many magical powers and by Fletcher, whose magic, like his personality, is rather weak. Dangers surround the trio at every turn, and they soon learn that trust must be earned and friendships must be carefully guarded.

Author and award-winning fantasy film-maker Mugdan has been writing this intriguing saga since she was in high school, and perhaps because of that, has retained a remarkable empathy for her teen heroine. Keriya is a multi-faceted character, capable of getting fed up with her shortcomings and ashamed of her failures while maintaining in her spirit the belief that she will have what it takes to act courageously in a crisis. Mugdan movingly depicts Keriya gaining the skills and confidence she will need for cosmic combat. The author also shows this growth in Keriya’s companions Roxanne and Fletcher, who are themselves facing challenges they never dreamt of; and the three are gradually gaining respect for each other.

Mugdan also manages to make the dragon a sensitive, likable player in this fantasy, while at the same time creating some super-unlikeable evil-doers: shadowbeasts, giant slugs, bogspectres, and of course the almost unconquerable Necrovar. Add to this a bit of romance, some supernatural magic, and at least one acrimonious enemy lurking in the background, and you have the recipe for a highly successful first in series fantasy novel.

September 28, 2018
FINDING BILLY BATTLES: An Account of Peril, Transgression and Redemption, (Book 1 of 3) by Ronald E. Yates – Literary, Historical Fiction, Germany

The best way to experience history is to ride along with someone who lived it. Author Ronald E. Yates allows us to do just that by cleverly inserting a story within a story in his spectacularly captivating novel, Finding Billy Battles.

The title character’s great-grandson, Ted Sayles, greets the reader in the novel’s prologue and explains how he came to be in possession of journals, letters, recordings, and other autobiographical materials of his great-grandfather. William Raglan Fitzroy Battles lived an entire century, from 1860 to 1960, and it was his wish that Ted “…help me set the record straight about some things I did, people I met, and some events I witnessed.”

And what a tale it is! One chock full of the peril, transgression, and redemption noted in the subtitle. Ted makes the astute choice to allow Billy to address the reader directly, thereby giving an immediacy and intimacy to this account of his childhood, young adult years, and early manhood. Hitch up your saddle because you are in for the ride of your life!

Billy also referred to as “William,” was born in Ford County, Kansas in 1860. His parents had been part of a wagon train heading to the western territories. Billy’s father fought for the Union during the Civil War and lost his life on the battlefield. His mother, an ardent abolitionist with a flair for dressmaking, raised Billy in Lawrence, Kansas, and insisted he attend the new university for a couple years when he came of age. Sensing her son’s restlessness, she allows him to travel to Dodge City, that “notoriously wild cow town” to work on the Dodge City Union newspaper for a summer. It’s a significant experience and William will remain a journalist his entire life, learning the business from the bottom up. His journalist’s eye will allow him to observe and assess what others might miss entirely. The same is undoubtedly true for Ronald E. Yates, an exceedingly talented journalist. The events in this book are carefully considered from every possible angle and relayed with admirable objectivity.

Journalism won’t be William’s entire life, however, because of key people and pivotal events that will shape his years. He interacts with noted figures of the time, including the taciturn yet quietly charismatic Wyatt Earp, the gregarious showman, and owner of the Crystal Palace Saloon, Bat Masterson, and that famous dentist, Doc Holliday, whose quick, sardonic wit was far stronger than his body, which was slowly surrendering to consumption. Such company is enough to make a young man forget ever returning to conventional life in Lawrence and continued studies at the University of Kansas.

While William won’t be a part of the famous battle at the OK Corral (which, he tells us, actually took place in a vacant lot behind the Corral), he has his own shoot-out, one that will plague him almost his entire life. While visiting his family’s old homestead, he and his companions discover squatters, the Bledsoe clan, on the property. One thing leads to another and events reach a fevered pitch with kidnappings, escapes, and, finally, William inadvertently shooting someone while defending himself from others. It shakes the young man to his core. Because of his connections with Earp and other lawmen, his version of events are believed, but that’s never the end of the story in the Wild West.

Vengeance has an arm longer than the law, and it will reach for William again and again. As a result, his courtship and marriage to Mallie McNab, a banker’s daughter in Denver, are impacted, as are his relations with his mother and young daughter. Can William weather it all or will he flee to foreign lands and encounter adventures of a different kind? At a dark point, William notes, “…my life descended wildly into a morass of adversity and peril.” It’s a statement worthy of Charles Dickens. Our protagonist, once indeed a young man with great expectations, now must decide what he must do to make life worth living. Thank heavens there are two more books in this series, The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles and The Lost Years of Billy Battles. We must know how it all turns out, and William has more than six decades yet to live.

With precise and fully realized characterizations, Ronald Yates will draw readers in immediately as they become aware of the will and grit it took to carve out a life on the frontier, and the courage necessary to live in a place like Tombstone, amongst people ready to settle any disagreement with a gunfight. Not all scenes take place in boomtowns and saloons, however. We’re also treated to alluring details of lovely rooming houses and majestic hotels including the Grand Hotel and the Tremont House Hotel.

The reader gets an almost literal taste of savory meals served in both private homes and the finest restaurants of the day. Most fun are the scenes that take place at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893 where William and his wife tour fascinating exhibits at Marshall Field’s Wholesale Store and learn that the Palmer House Hotel is now lighting its rooms with electricity! It’s all marvelous and so artfully described that readers may envy the characters. It’s the rare and talented author who can achieve this, and it’s not hard to imagine Billy, Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, and the Earp brothers tipping their hats to Ronald E. Yates.

Highly recommended.

The second book in the series, The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles, won 1^st Place in the 2016 Somerset Awards.

August 24, 2018
The LOST YEARS of BILLY BATTLES, Book 3 in the Finding Billy Battles Trilogy by Ronald E. Yates – Historical Fiction, Literary, Action/Adventure

Congratulations to Ronald E. Yates for winning the 2018 CIBAs

OVERALL GRAND PRIZE – BEST BOOK of the YEAR

for The Lost Years of Billy Battles!

Reviewer’s Note: I’ve begun few books as eagerly as I did this one. Having read the first two volumes of Ronald E. Yates’ extraordinary trilogy, Finding Billy Battles, I couldn’t wait to continue his story in the final volume, The Lost Years of Billy Battles. The third installment lived up to the exceedingly high standard set in the first two volumes. Billy Battles is as dear and fascinating a literary friend as I have ever encountered. I learned much about American and international history, and you will too if you read any or all of the books. Each is an independent work, but if read in relation to the others, the reader experiences that all too rare sense of complete transport to another world, one fully realized in these pages because the storytelling is so skillful and thoroughly captivating. Trust me; you’ll want to read all three volumes.

For those not familiar with the series, Yates presents his books as works of “faction,” a story “based in part on fact” but also “augmented by narrative fiction.” The protagonist, William Fitzroy Raglan Battles, born in Kansas in 1860, lives a full 100 years and takes part in some of the most significant events of his time. He encounters key figures of the day (Bat Masterson Wyatt Earp, President Wilson, Francisco “Pancho” Villa, among others), gives us their backstories, and quietly appraises them.

Yates, a journalist with a keen eye for nuance and subtlety, has created a protagonist with superb critical thinking skills. William, a journalist, and occasional soldier examines people and transactions from every angle. Just as at ease in a Kansas saloon as he is at the captain’s table on a grand ocean liner on the Pacific, Billy Battles is also ruthlessly honest about his shortcomings and feels tremendous guilt when he acts impulsively or inadvertently causes harm to others. Yates has crafted a fully human character who is easy to admire, perhaps because he is admirably cognizant of his own flaws.

This installment of the trilogy opens with William enjoying middle age in Chicago with his second wife, his beloved Katharina, a former German baroness, and his daughter, Anna Marie, now a student at Northwestern University. It is 1914 and World War I is raging in Europe. Germany, late to the spoils of colonialism, is seeking to make up for lost time with its policy of Weltpolitik that advocates for imperialist expansion.

When William is contacted by his friend and former military associate, General Freddy Funston, who informs him that a German merchant ship is bound to Mexico to deliver arms and munitions to its dictator, General Victoriano Huerta, William and Katharina travel to Mexico and pose as tourists while trying to find out as much as possible about the shipment. They learn that in addition to weapons, the ship is carrying a fortune in gold and silver bars. Further investigations reveal that Germany hopes to convince Mexico to engage in skirmishes along the U.S. border, creating enough havoc that America will sit out the war in Europe and thus allow Germany expansionist gains there.

Although in Mexico at the behest of the U.S. military, William and Katharina readily understand why Mexicans feel hostile to Americans; a significant portion of the Southwest used to belong to Mexico. However, President Wilson does not recognize Huerta and is all too eager to engage in big stick diplomacy when he chooses. Also, many Mexicans are desperately poor, the Campesinos working as virtual slaves on haciendas for no pay. It’s not surprising that they cheer on Venustiano Carranza, leader of the Northern opposition Constitutionalists charismatic lieutenants, the intense, intelligent Zapata who yearns to bring about land reform for the poor, and the wild but charismatic Pancho Villa who sparks outrage when his men murder 17 Texas mining engineers.

The U.S. military decides to intervene and, once again, William is impressed into service, this time with General Pershing and the General’s aide-de-camp, George S. Patton. While the U.S. Army has the latest in weaponry and travels with motorized vehicles and untrustworthy aircraft, the new technology causes a lot of noise, making it difficult to sneak up on Villa and his light-footed army, one that’s thoroughly familiar with the terrain and beloved by the people. William’s observations and reporting on all of this for his Chicago newspaper are riveting and wryly amusing.

Following this Mexican adventure, William barely has time to catch his breath when his past once again catches up with him. Mason Bledsoe, the son of the man William killed due to complex circumstances when he was just nineteen, abducts Katharina. With the help of his cousin, William determines his wife’s whereabouts and attempts to free her, as well as seek vengeance on those who kidnapped her. The results of his actions necessitate his leaving the country for his safety and, more importantly in his mind, the safety of his family. Over the next decades, he will spend time in the Philippines and Indochina, where he will again grapple with the blatant injustices of colonialism, aggrieved by the plight of native men working 16-hour days on French rubber plantations in intense heat, their flesh bitten and eaten by mosquitoes, oxflies, and army ants.

While abroad, William’s personal life takes some shocking turns that motivates him to return to the U.S. in 1936. His final years in Kansas, his birthplace, are the quietest of his life. Billy often muses on all he has seen and experienced. When he meets his great-grandson, Ted Sayles, he decides to bequeath him his guns, uniforms, journals, and correspondence. In the Epilogue, Ted addresses the reader and shares his thoughts about some shocking surprises he finds amongst William’s papers. It’s a most satisfying conclusion to an extraordinary trilogy.

At his behest, William’s grave includes the simple statement, “He did his best.” The same is undoubtedly true of the author, Ronald E. Yates. The research involved in putting William’s story on the page had to have been immense. In addition to a careful plotting of history, the details he weaves into his prose regarding fashion, food, weather, social class, and technology make this the richest account of a life imaginable.

Ronald E. Yates won 1st Place in the SOMERSET Awards for The Improbable Journeys of Billy Battles: Book 2, Finding Billy Battles Trilogy of this extraordinary series.

July 13, 2018