I was a touch overwhelmed by the military jargon that dominates the prologue of Chris Durbin's latest book, Silkworm! Four Days in April. The opening pages are filled with an alphabet soup of acronyms -- such as AAWO, AAWC, AAW, PWO, EWD and UAA-1 -- that had me constantly turning to a helpful two-page glossary that explained their meaning and pronunciation, as well as an additional one-page glossary of terms such as "bird negat," "boghammer," "hooter" and "vampire" that, even in context, didn't always make sense to me.

It took me longer than I would have liked to memorize the necessary vocabulary to understand this book. By the end, I was still checking the glossary or, more often than not, simply skipping over the confusing terminology.

It doesn't get any less "soupy" as the story progresses. Durbin rarely uses his characters' names, preferring the taut military style of addressing each other by title or acronym, and when a name does pop up in the narrative, I usually had forgotten to which position it belonged. (A cast of characters would have been helpful along with the glossaries.)

That said, Durbin thrusts readers immediately into a tense battle situation that sweeps away many of those concerns. And then, heck, it all turns out to be a training exercise anyway. The ship, the Type 42 destroyer HMS Winchester, is still in safe waters off Portland, England.

Silkworm is something of a departure for Durbin, whose excellent Carlisle & Holbrooke series -- set during and after the Seven Years War, standing (so far) at 16 novels -- has kept me enthralled since 2020. While those books are set during the Age of Sail in the mid- to late 17th century, Silkworm is a more modern nautical story, set in the late 1980s and drawing on Durbin's own experiences with the Royal Navy at that time.

It takes place over four days in the tumultuous Arabian Gulf, where ongoing hostilities between Iran and Iraq have forced British, American and other allied navies to provide military escorts for oil tankers, which otherwise could become collateral damage in the war. Through the course of the novel, Winchester is tasked with several escort missions, both for tankers and minesweepers, and they will run afoul of potential hostile action from both sides of the conflict, as enemy ships, boats, planes, mines and missiles keep the officers and crew on edge.

The narrative is tense throughout, as Captain Mayhew and his crew are on constant alert for radar blips or transmission signals that foreshadow an attack. Of course, actual attacks are rare -- although not unheard of, particularly with the American navy giving Iranian naval forces a pounding as retribution for an incident involving a mine.

I suspect fans of modern naval warfare will absolutely love Silkworm, and there's no denying that Durbin -- a Royal Navy veteran who served on destroyers in the era described in the book -- knows his subject well. His descriptions of shipboard life and his easy use of the jargon shows a degree of familiarity that no amount of research could produce. Even so, I personally miss the more primitive setting of his previous books, with wooden ships and roaring cannons rather than the painted steel and automated weaponry of the late 20th century.

Also missing from this book is any sort of character development. Readers never get to know any of the characters well, and while Durbin offers a few tantalizing hints into their backgrounds and personalities, nothing is ever explored. Silkworm is a terse, streamlined snapshot of modern military routines that, even when missiles are in the air or attack boats are swarming the convoy, rarely allows a glimpse of the people bravely manning their stations in the fray.

I enjoyed Silkworm largely because Durbin is a consistently good writer who knows his subject well and brings that insight to the page. That said, it's probably my least favorite of his books -- but that, let's be honest, is largely due to personal taste. Don't hesitate to give this a try!

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