Liz Bourke Reviews The Price of Redemption by Shawn Carpenter

The Price of Redemption, Shawn Carpenter (Saga 978-1-6680-3373-9, $18.99, 358pp, tp) July 2024.

The Price of Redemption is Shawn Carpen­ter’s debut novel. Inspired by the exploits of the British Royal Navy during during the French revolutionary wars, it sets its story in a different world to ours and adds magic to the mixture. As a fan of both fantasy and of the naval adventure story (though frequently through gritted teeth over the pervasive misogyny of the genre), as well as someone whose shelves boast such scintil­lating titles as British Naval Administration in the Age of Walpole (Baugh, 1965), The Royal Navy Victualling Yard, East Smithfield, London (Grainger and Phillpotts, 2010) and Seamanship in the Age of Sail (Harland, 1984, reissued 2020), I was delighted to anticipate a novel that combines high magic fantasy with the age of sail. But despite Carpenter’s clear knowledge of and enthusiasm for the details of an 18th-century ship of war (or its fantastical equivalent), I find myself more disap­pointed than thrilled with the novel overall.

The Marquese Enid d’Tancreville (and do you pronounce that any differently from de Tancreville, or has fantasy’s longstanding love of unnecessary apostrophes slipped through here?) was wealthy in Ardainne until the Theocratic Revolution. Now she’s still relatively wealthy but is fleeing her homeland in order to survive, for the successful Theocrats are not fond of aristocrats. She intends to join a cavalry regiment in Albion, which is at war with Ardainne, and revenge herself upon the Theocratic forces. Unfortunately, the ship bearing her to safety is overtaken by a Theocratic warship. Fortunately, the Albion frigate Alarum, under the command of the energetic Rue Nath, is able to intervene.

Spared capture by the enemies that would put her to death, Enid finds young Lieutenant Nath (a gentleman from a family with a long history in Albion’s sea service, left commander of the Alarum by the tardiness of that vessel’s original captain, one Captain Ambrose) has succeeded in talking her into taking up the post of the Alarum’s magister – the ship’s mage – left vacant by the recent death in action of its previous incumbent.

Enid is quite literally at sea in a new world of naval customs and rituals, but swiftly begins to master them. She has a secret and dangerous ally in the ghost of the former magistrate – dangerous, because those who speak with ghosts are consid­ered dreadfully unlucky aboard ship, and the crew would turn on her instantly if they knew – and something of a friend in her new commanding of­ficer, who is willing to extend her trust despite her reticence to speak about her background. But Nath has troubles of his own. Captain Ambrose, HMS Alarum’s original captain, still has partisans among the ship’s crew, including its warrant officers, who would like to see Nath fail, and while Nath’s family has a certain amount of interest and influence with Albion’s Admiralty, so too does Captain Ambrose, who sits on the opposite side of a service rivalry over the post of Sea Lord. Ambrose may, in fact, be soon restored to command of the Alarum, which could well be fatal for Nath’s own career.

The admiral in command of Albion’s Merentian fleet (a painfully close paral­lel to our Mediterranean) entrusts Nath with a special mission which might well make or break that career: to recapture the 32-gun frigate Redemption from the forces of Naveroñia, to whom it was sold by mutineers.

Aficionados of naval history will rec­ognise that the Redemption is a barely disguised HMS Hermione, both famous and infamous in British naval history. A précis of the relevant portion of Herm­ione’s career: In February 1797, Captain Hugh Pigot assumed command. An officer with a reputation for brutality who had already caused at least one incident in the Caribbean by having the master of an American merchantman seized and flogged, by September of 1797 he had succeeded in driving his crew to mutiny. The bloodiest mu­tiny, in fact, in British naval history, resulting in the death of most of the officers: the captain, the first, second, and third lieutenants, the marine lieutenant, the bosun, the purser, the surgeon, two midshipmen and the captain’s clerk all had their bodies thrown overboard, some – according to the eyewitnesses – while they were still alive. A few days later, the mutineers handed the Hermione over to the Spanish, who were at this time also at war with the British. The Spanish commissioned Hermione into their naval service. Two years later, in 1799, the admiral of the British Mediterranean fleet, Hyde Parker, learned that the Hermione lay at anchor in Puerto Cabello, under the guns of the shore forts there. He ordered Captain Edward Hamilton, commanding HMS Surprise, a 28-gun sixth-rate frigate, to intercept her if she put to sea. Instead of intercepting her, Hamilton cut her out of the harbour with a force of 100 marines and sailors – half his crew – in the Surprise’s boats.

Carpenter models the Redemption exceedingly closely on the Hermione and takes Hamilton’s cutting-out expedition as the exact model for Nath’s cutting-out of the Redemption, down to the shore batteries, gunboats, and the initial repulse of the boarding attempt. The main difference here is that Carpenter’s Albion is not yet at war with Naveroñia, making Lt. Nath’s harbour operation not just a case of exceeding his orders, as Hamil­ton did, but an act of war against a neutral power. Which his admiral takes exceedingly lightly.

When Carpenter comes to write action (for all he hews very close indeed to his historical parallel for his climactic battle), he writes it with a lively pace and a solid command of tension. But outside moments of action, The Price of Redemption lacks the dash and verve I’d hoped for. Carpenter’s dialogue, and indeed at times his prose, attempts to mimic the register of his 18th-century inspiration, rather than reaching for anything more colloquial and modern. This often leaves it, and consequently his characters, seeming stuffy and pompous. The air of pomposity is not helped by Enid’s enormous sense of her own aristocratic self-worth, and her eagerness to leap to judgement over her perceived inferiors: a trait that leaves me as a reader rather more in sympathy with her would-be executioners than with Enid herself.

Enid is the primary viewpoint character. Nath, the other main protagonist, comes across as more of a figure of boy’s-own wish-fulfilment: more a Richard Bolitho or a Thomas Kydd than a bluff Jack Aubrey, so competent at action and at sea and so unhappily adrift in nearly every other circumstance. His partnership with Enid lacks the instant chemistry, the mutual dislike alchemically transmuted through exposure and necessity into respect and affection, of Aubrey and Maturin or of David Drake’s space-operatic naval chalk-and-cheese duo of Leary and Mundy. Enid and Nath’s quick friendship, on the contrary, is not leavened with the same degree of personality, and I can’t help but suspect that I would have found the novel’s en­tire arc more compelling had the two of them had to overcome more in the way of dislike or distrust to forge a working partnership. As it is, The Price of Redemption is less a single narrative unified by theme or event than a series of diverting incidents featuring the same set of characters.

Carpenter integrates magic into this close parallel of the European 18th century fluidly and unobtrusively, allowing it to play a role without having it overturn the technological constraints of an 18th-century equivalent society. But hewing close to a historical inspiration has left gaps and inconsistencies in the social world that he portrays: I appreciate a naval novel with egalitarian gender relations as much as the next person, but it does beg the question of why the forms of fashion, courtesy, and honour remain so similar to our own 18th century if one fundamental assumption is overturned. (And the question of menstrual supplies, much less gynaecological care, about a warship rather haunts me.)

It’s not The Price of Redemption’s fault that I hoped for more from it than it wanted to provide. It’s a fun, light, and entertaining sea story with magic, and Carpenter’s evocation of, and joyful sharing of his enthusiasm for, the wooden world of ships at sea leaps off the page with loving detail. But at every step where The Price of Redemption had to choose between making a conventional and an interesting choice with regard to character, set­ting, or plot, it takes the conventional path – save only, perhaps, the romance between Enid and the female Lt. Merryweather. A conventional adven­ture story is still enjoyable. I fully expect to look forward to reading Carpenter’s next novel with much the same sense of commingled enthusiasm and compromise as I once looked forward to the work of Julian Stockwin. But Carpenter, at least, has magic to enliven the field.

This review and more like it in the August 2024 issue of Locus.

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