Just Finished Reading: Destroyermen - Maelstrom by Taylor Anderson

The crew of the USS Walker and her sister ship are just beginning to adapt to the strange world they appear to be trapped in, a world in which humans did not evolve, a world where the last remnants of the Lemurian civilisation cling on to survival under the ever present threat of the reptilian Grik. But the American ships, obsolete in their own world, have become some of the most powerful in their new home and have become symbols of hope for an entire race. Yet facing them is their biggest challenge, for the Japanese cruiser that almost sunk them in their Pacific has followed them into this new almost familiar world and is bent on their destruction. The Americans and their Allies must do everything in their power to fight the twin forces on the Grik and the Japanese because they know that defeat means much more than losing a battle or even the war. Defeat means total annihilation. But always in the back of their minds are the rumours of other earlier contacts with human manned ships. Have they survived in such a dangerous world for possibly hundreds of years? Everything might depend on the answer to that question. Everything…..

This is the third book in the Destroyermen series and proved to be yet another cracking read. There are many things that I really, really like about these books. They appear to be very realistic in their portrayal of life aboard ship and the command structure just feels right. The dialogue fits too. Maybe it’s a little too modern (being actually based in the 1940’s afterall) but trying for 40’s realism might be pushing things a bit too far. The politics, between the humans and the Lemurians and between various Lemurian factions again feels real. The making and especially breaking of deals is exactly what you would expect from morally complex societies living in difficult times. Also, which is comparatively rare, people die in these books. Important central characters actually die. You become attached to characters not knowing if they are going to survive all the way through the book – which is great. There’s nothing as boring as knowing for a fact that the main characters are going to survive – no matter what the author throws at them (which inevitably calls into question why I like some of my other favourite books but no one said I wasn’t complicated or contradictory – I’m a human being, deal with it). Anyway, there are another three books to come and I fully expect to enjoy them as much as the first three. This is an excellent series and one of a growing number of naval based novels that I am enjoying a great deal. Definitely more to come and definitely highly recommended.