The field of nautical fiction, set in the Age of Sail and usually putting the British Royal Navy at the forefront, is crowded with authors, many of whom have produced lengthy series that allow their protagonists to grow and develop through the ranks. With A Talent for Trouble, the first book in Christopher C Tubbs' The Dorset Boy series, Martin Stockley is truly starting at the bottom rung of the ladder ... and readers might be surprised how quickly he rises up it.

Tubbs came to my attention as a relatively new author of fiction set in the nautical and steampunk genres, both of which are within my field of interest. I was curious to see how his hero, Marty, compares to others in the field.

Marty is just 12 years old, the youngest son of a Dorset clay miner. His fate is to follow his father and brothers into the mines, but a sympathetic teacher secures him a position instead as a ship's boy, acting as a servant to her brother, Captain James Taylor of the frigate HMS Falcon. It's the early days of the French Revolution, so there is plenty of work for an active frigate to do.

And Marty proves to be a quick study, learning news skills and developing new talents at a shocking pace. With little to no effort, he becomes an expert seaman, expert swordsman, expert knife fighter, expert gunner ... and the list goes on. By book's end, it seems like he will become a master spy, too. He also rescues all the right people to earn notice, including his own captain in his first ship battle and, later, a beautiful French countess just about his own age. He advances from ship's boy to midshipman in no time.

He also amasses an unreasonably vast fortune, through his share of several prize captures, in such rapidity, one assumes he will be named crown prince by the end of the second book in the series.

As a writer, Tubbs has a certain breathless narrative style of writing. His excesses, unfortunately, aren't restrained by the guiding hand of a competent editor; The Dorset Boy series is published independently and certainly could have used a more practiced eye to rein in the run-on sentences and punctuation errors. (Page numbers and more uniform pagination would have been nice, too.)

The tone of the book suggests a young-adult target audience, although descriptions of gory deaths, adolescent erections and references to rape suggest otherwise.

Fans of nautical fiction will likely find A Talent for Trouble a bit too simplistic, lacking in detail and the kind of gritty realism that aficionados of the genre have come to expect. The rapidity with which Marty learns and masters each new skill set before him -- and the degree of luck with which he wins every fight and earns the respect and support of every person of influence he meets -- will test even the most credulous of readers. (Tubbs' website notes his work was shortlisted in 2020 for the SABA fiction award, but since that honor seems to be designated for South Asian writers, there might be a typo there, too. Unless he's referring to the island in the Caribbean?)

Nevertheless, Tubbs was kind enough to send me the first five books in the series, and Marty is a likable boy, so I will give the next book a chance and hope for improvement.

[ visit Christopher C Tubbs online ]