Review: Exciting story right from the start
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 04 30, 2013
Skull Eye Island (The Adventures of Jonathan Moore) is a fast moving adventure story set in the Napoleonic wars. It starts off with a masterful description of life as a homeless child in London.Johnathon Moore is surviving the seemingly impossible conditions until he and his best friend Sean are captured by a press gang from the large frigate HMS Poseidon. This was not an unusual thing in those days, and as far as I know the law that allowed the Royal Navy to force people to serve on its ships is still in force. But this press gang was specifically looking for Johnathon. And on the ship everyone seemed to know his name but avoiding telling him how they knew it.This book is certainly worth five stars for its exciting adventure, and for its description of London. The accuracy of the naval parts of the story are variable. The author seems to confuse grape shot with canister rounds, and the naval battles appear to over estimate the effectiveness of naval guns of the era. However, these things do not seriously detract from the story.