Short and sweet

If you’ve listened to Hornblower they feel like a nice short and sweet version of them, very enjoyable.

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Good introduction

I read these back in the day……they are a good introduction to the series and the age of sale.

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Two splendid navy tales

Each story was compelling and very exciting, going back to the 1070s. The language is good and the whole feel of each story takes me back to those times.

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1 person found this helpful

Finally gave up

I gave up half way through. Even though the story line should be enjoyable, Somehow I found it lacked changes in momentum and was a bit predictable. I found the narrator despite varying in accents for the characters, slightly monotonous in his pace and overall accent to listen to. There was no good fun adventurous lightness of touch here or humour in the story line or characters. The senior officers all seemed to behave in a uniformly critically negative way, which became a bit waring. Bolitho clearly is a good hero type, in the vein of a Hornblower, but something for me was missing in this storyline and narration.

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Repeats and is missing 3rd book

The audio book repeats a couple of chapters and is missing the 3rd book which isn't avaliable on audible, it's a good story and good narration just annoying you can't listen to the whole series

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1 person found this helpful

Needs Editing

Well narrated, good stories, but needs editing: two books in one recording and duplicate chapters.

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Midshipman ballitho

excellent book and well told by the narrator Will
look forward to the next book in the series called band of brothers

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First of an incomplete series of 30 books

This volume is of two original books. But the chapters early in book 2 are mixed up/duplicated. so you end up listening twice to the same content. Bad, bad show, Audible. But Audible clearly cares not. because issues of this sort are never fixed. When errors are identified audible should edit the audio files to make the product fit for use, then email all buyers to let them re-download the corrected file. It's not shown as a discounted buy, it's a full credit to buy. Whereas a printed book effectively cannot be recalled, these recordings are very easily - as in CHEAPLY - fixable. But.... never, ever are.

The Bolitho books themselves are rather formulaic, but if you enjoy historic naval fiction there's only so much around. There are the 11 Hornblower books by CS Forester which absolutely set the standard, there's the Jack Aubrey books that are pretty awful - then there's these by Alexander Kent. Inevitably there's only so much variety of action available to include, and once you have read through a couple of battles you can expect more of the same. And that's more or less what you get. There's some character development, but not that much. Admirals tend to be portrayed as either thoroughly decent or thoroughly bad eggs with little in between.
And the progress of Bolitho through many, many battles with only a case of malaria and a single musket ball strike (in the shoulder, where else?) is frankly too incredible for credibility. Explosive mayhem, cannonballs grapeshot and general destruction are all around him yet the infamous wood splinters seem to always contrive to fly past Mr Bolitho.
Overlook these unbelievabilities, there's lots of listening time ahead of you. Some might say to buy maybe three of them and just repeat listen to those. Because the repetitious nature of the series is said to infer that that you might not notice the difference. I wouldn't go that far, but the scope of these books is pretty limited.

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2 people found this helpful

Alexander Kent

This author has, in this book, set the scene for an exciting series of yarns which promise to match those of Julian Stockwin's Kydd series. looking forward to the remainder in the series

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An Excellent Series

I read all of the Bolitho books as a teenager picking up the books after my father had read them, cracking tales that take you back to the late C18th. First two chapters of book 2 are repeated! Come on Audible get it sorted!!

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