It's a bleak Christmas morning for the officers and men late of HMS Prometheus, which ran aground on the coast of France at the end of the last book in Alaric Bond's Fighting Sail series. Many are dead and some, including Captain Richard Banks, are captives of the French. Precious few -- including Lt. Thomas King, Lt. Tony Hunt, Midshipman Adams, surgeon Robert Manning and a handful of seamen -- escaped capture in a small ship's boat, and when the book begins they are trying to evade their pursuers along the southern coastline.

The Blackstrap Station represents another sea change in the fortunes of Bond's large, varied and ever-changing cast of characters. King, who has always had a starring role but was, in most books to date, subservient to Banks, is now a leader of men, promoted to command of the fast sloop Kestrel in the Mediterranean theater of Britain's ongoing war. While he retains some familiar faces around him -- Hunt, Adams and Manning among them -- Bond introduces new characters as well. Seamen Wiessner, Miller and Jones are among the newcomers who will play important parts in the story, while Midshipman Summers, also a new addition, will come into his own.

Besides the Prometheans' flight to freedom in a hostile land and sea, the story includes a cutting-out mission, a stolen (but not shared) chicken, a dreary bit of desk work, a little grave-robbing, a live entombment, a shy-of-battle frigate captain, and a couple of decisive actions against a much larger French warship. There's also a love triangle -- rectangle? pentagon? -- and a surprising murder. I'm fearful that last plot twist will remove another well-liked character from the storyline, but I'll have to wait until the next book to find out.

And that, as I have mentioned before, is one of Bond's strengths. While most books in this genre provide readers with one central protagonist and any number of supporting characters, Bond genuinely has multiple protagonists who share the spotlight. While occasionally this can get a little overwhelming -- a potential wrinkle that's abated by the inclusion in each book of a character list -- it means readers are never sure their favorite characters are safe from death, major injury or other means of being sidelined. Bond keeps his audience guessing, and that adds a frisson of excitement that ramps up the stakes and, let's be honest, an invested reader's level of anxiety just a bit.

My own sense of unease was heightened because The Blackstrap Station was the last book of the series in my collection; I owe the author a hearty "thank you" for sending along the next few volumes so I don't have to wait long to see what happens next.

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