Honour Bound, the 10th book in Alaric Bond's excellent Fighting Sail series, finds Lt. Tom King in command of the sloop HMS Kestrel. A Mediterranean escort mission goes well, with Kestrel handily seeing off a pair of pirate xebecs, but the plucky little sloop soon runs afoul of a French fleet and has no choice but to surrender.

Soon, King and his men are afoot, trudging on their long journey to the French prison city of Verdun. There, the officers (and a few of the captured seamen) live in relative comfort, although bound by parole not to try and escape. There, too, King is reunited with his erstwhile captain, Sir Richard Banks, who spent the last book languishing in the French prison. The prisoners do their best to settle in and sit out the rest of the war, although there is some talk of breaking their word and fleeing -- a suggestion that does not sit well with some members of the group.

But an ill-conceived gambling den established by one warrant officer and a poorly considered brawl at a French theater land the former shipmates in deeper waters. Eventually, escape becomes their only option.

Oh, and King, who still has a loveless marriage waiting for him back home in England, finds himself in yet another romantic quandary -- this time with a sympathetic French girl who may be their only hope.

Then there's Lewis, a former member of Banks' crew who had been raised to an officer's post and performed well enough, but after violating his parole (also to escape a French prison), he is regarded at home to be without honor and is therefore unemployable by the Royal Navy or the merchant fleet. Desperate for income, he turns to smuggling, and that means inevitable encounters with British revenue cutters and, worse yet, Navy vessels. Lewis proves more than willing to defend himself, even at the cost of allied ships and lives. Such a course could easily turn him into the villain of the story, but Bond has different plans for him.

The only problem with this entry in the series is the introduction of a supernatural element that was heretofore not part of an otherwise grounded historical saga. A new character, a crewman named Lovemore, has psychic abilities that include foreseeing the future, reading minds and communicating with ghosts. This was to me an unrealistic and unwelcome intrusion into the storyline; it's bad enough that he predicts deaths and the success of missions with relative ease. It's worse when he meets someone else with the same abilities. Fortunately, this seems like a one-off intrusion and is unlikely to turn Fighting Sails into a fantasy series.

Otherwise, this remains an excellent saga. Bond's skill at introducing new characters into the narrative means readers have an ever-changing sea to navigate -- and there is never any guarantee that beloved characters are immune from harm. That extra layer of tension keeps me turning pages at a frantic rate! I'm glad I still have a few more volumes to read.

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