Review: Some quick, light reading
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 29, 2013
The world as we know it has ended.We never really find out how long ago (at least few generations, probably more than a century) or how (there is mentioned some kind of plaque).After this Event group of survivors settled down on a sub-Antarctic island Kerguelen. During dozens of years this society managed to grow and even thrive. They virtually discovered seafaring again and set few island colonies over the world.Out of nowhere "pirates" jumped. They started attacking Kerguelinian and their settlements without any obvious reason - attacking, destroying and kidnapping settlers.This is the background and in that moment starts the action.It is necessary to stand up against pirates, therefore Navy is created.For start it is only one ship Navy, but still a Navy.So during the story we witness creating the Navy, its first warship and accompany this first warship and its adventures, including few enemies encounters.The story is interesting and quick paced, characters are nice. Battle descriptions are very addictive, alas some other part of book is a bit tedious and to wordy (especially first visit on Nosy Be).There are plenty of inconsistencies, tooSome of them are:- we never precisely find out why and what happened - nuclear war? meteor impact? - it is important in next one- Kerguelans think that they are only one technology advanced people on the world. If that is true than it means that all technology advanced people had to gather after Catastrophe and travel to Kerguelen islands becoming their predecessors.- if catastrophe was plaque than survivors would have gather in one place from all over the world and than travel to Kerguelen - impossible. If it was nuclear war that all would be from one place, not from all over the world so it is impossible, too. If people could prepare for this than they would choose better place to settle so the Catastrophe had to be quite quick. So it is just impossible that nowhere in the world lived another technological society. Yet the radios picked up nothing??  And all natives are described like very primitive peoples.- why the h*** did those survivors settled on some small island near Antarctic??? There is no wood (all have to be imported), there is cold, windy, it is not friendly for crops or animals (chickens have to live in heated sheds). So why??? Especially that they are making settlements in much more friendly areas like Madagascar.And how??It is written than those survivors were from all over the world - Taiwan, France etc. They had to gather somewhere and travel expressly to Kerguelen islands. What sick mind would choose such island??- why they don't want to settle on main land - only islands and only those uninhabited. There are plenty of ruins on main land so it would be much better to live near it and loot it than loot it and transport back to Antarctic. And there would be much more place to settle. And much better conditions. and resources like wood, coal, animals (food and work).- they are able to build 100 meters (yes one hundred meter - 330 foots) long cargo ships using metal framework and plywood yet they are unable to produce larger amounts of small guns - 100 pieces for every seaman on first Navy ship is to expensive so most of them have only machetes!!!!. Yet - on Nosy Be 20 of those seamen (not gun experts) where able to produce 60 guns during two weeks.- they are using boat with Stirling engine to tow big warship. Yet no one ever thought about building this engine into ship itself. OK it was the first warship and there was no enough time to adapt it.But cargo ships also could extremely gain having such engine and still nobody never did it!!!I won't mention custom of giving every sailor vodka every day or vodka being present at virtually every meal - what is it - WWII Russian army??OK, lets not be to cruel and stop here.The book describes peaceful society trying to survive in harsh conditions after all world being destroyed and almost everybody eradicated.It should be lesson for everyone who survive. Lesson what hatred, animosities and cruelty could do to humanity.Unfortunately evil enemy out of nowhere starts destroying everything this society build. It again leads to war, causalities, despair and destruction.It creates a question about us - can we change? can we become better peoples? can we do it ourself or do we need total destruction of everything around us to trigger any changes? and are we able to learn on our mistakes?