All the Brave Fellows

by James L. Nelson

Book Overview

James L. Nelson, "the American counterpart to L. Patrick O'Brian" (David Brink), writes breathtaking descriptions of the age when saliors became warriors and warriors became legends. Now his acclaimed Revolution at Sea Saga continues as General George Washington fights a loosing battle to keep Philidelpia from the hands of the British.
ALL THE BRAVE FELLOWS
It is 1777, the Year of the Hangman, and Captain Isaac Biddlecomb is bound...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671038478
• ISBN13: 9780671038472
• Release Date: July 2001
• Publisher: Atria Books
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Only the Strong Hearted Should Read Nelson's Books.

If you have a weak heart, tire easy, or prone to sea sickness or startle easy by the sound sound of cannon fire ... dont read this or any other of James Nelson's books .. because as soon you open the book you realize you are going to sea and its going to be rough! Nelson's books (5 in the Revolution at Sea Saga series) are a truly the best sea sagas I have ever read .. including Mr. O'Brians. His close relation of history to fiction puts the reader into the history books and into the action. As a history major and amatuer historian of the period, I can find no fault or error. His charactors are depicted so completly they become real. You share thier emotions,thier excitement and thier adventure. Nelson's style of writing is without doubt, amoung the best I have ever read. I highly recomend this as well as other books by James Nelson.

Best of a great series

I have enjoyed all of James Nelson's books in the Isaac Biddlecomb series, but this one is the best by far. Nelson's skill at characterization is in full force here. He creates believable, riviting people put in often impossible situations and reacting the way real people will. It is just not right to say the British are portrayed as evil - they get the same even treatment that the Americans do - not good, not bad, just people. On top of that, the plot moves at break-neck speed. Great reading! Though the first three books say "Trilogy" the last two say "Saga". Nelson's web site says he hopes to finish the Biddlecomb series some day, and I certainly hope he does! Also don't miss Nelson's Marlowe novels, starting with The Guardship.

Very Enjoyable

I have read all of Nelson's Revolution at Sea books, and liked them all, but All the Brave Fellows is the best of the lot. A terrific read. I also loved the first book in Nelson's new trilogy, The Guardship, about an ex-pirate. It is edgier than the Biddlecomb books, but like Nelson's others, it is a fast paced, historically accurate novel. Fans of Isaac Biddlecomb should read The Guardship as well.

Authenticity and suspense create a winner

What Patrick O'Brian did for the Royal Navy in his epic series, Maine author James L. Nelson is now doing for the fledgling American navy during the Revolutionary War. Rousing plots, historical authenticity and seafaring as vivid as a slap of salt spray or a whiff of the bilge will have readers hoping Nelson can make the American Revolution last a long, long time.The fifth in the series featuring Captain Isaac Biddlecomb, "All the Brave Fellows," takes place during the fall of 1777. With his wife and infant son aboard, Biddlecomb sails for Philadelphia to take charge of the Falmouth, a 28-gun newly built frigate, and whisk it away from the city before General Howe's invading army can seize it.For all Biddlecomb knows, he may already be too late. But trouble comes long before Philadelphia. In an exciting, well-constructed scene of warring strategies and over-eagerness, Biddlecomb, bolstered by the company of two privateers, takes on a lone British sloop of war. But the undisciplined privateers desert him at the first threat of British cannon and the enemy forces his beloved brig Charlemagne aground, where Biddlecomb burns it rather than let the ship fall into British hands.Shaken by his responsibility for the danger to his wife and child as well as the loss of his ship, Biddlecomb is humbled, on foot, and stalked by his old nemesis Smeaton, (a British naval officer aboard the victorious sloop) whose career was earlier blighted by Biddlecomb and whose obsessive lust for revenge occasionally seems over the top.Meanwhile, in Philadelphia, the Falmouth is endangered, with the British invasion proceeding and the Royal Navy overwhelming the hobbled-together Pennsylvania Navy. Master shipwright Malachi Foote desperately induces a band of Continental Army deserters to help him try to save the ship.Point of view shifts between Biddlecomb and Foote with breathtaking suspense. But, while Nelson delivers plenty of action, he places it squarely in the context of history and character, involving the reader in the squabbles between factions of the former colonials' military. State navies, for instance, a bizarre concept to the modern mind, answering to an altogether different authority than the stripling Continental Navy.And Biddlecomb's wife is a brave, spirited woman whose agenda is sometimes comically, sometimes wrenchingly different from her husband's. His struggle to balance domestic life with naval command is deftly done. "The difference between the great cabin and the quarterdeck was startling....It took genuine effort for Biddlecomb to shift his concerns from Jack's need to be burped to his ship's need to be driven into battle." And later, during an angry disagreement with his wife: "He longed to cross swords with Smeaton, or to plunge into the thick of battle, where the emotions - terror, hatred, rage - were so pure and uncomplicated."Nelson's page-turner brings the Revolution to life on the high seas - buffeted by

Another Nelson Broadside

Once more James L. Nelson brings Capt Isaac Biddlecomb through one scrape after another. Hardly allowing the reader to catch his breath from one crisis to another, the Nelson style of 'no frills' and clean descriptive action plummets our hero from disaster to victory in a whirl wind of action. Never before have I been so dedicated to a story that I could not put it down before the smoke cleared from its final action. Mr. Nelson ties his fictional characters so closely to real history that sometimes it is difficult to unravel fact from fiction. I highly recommend this book to all lovers of tough living, hard fighting hero's of the high seas.