This felt like an old time adventure novel, but less…. Dated? The writing style feels dated as is appropriate for the time period and the genre, the contents are not. The book contains a lot of historical homophobia, xenophobia etc, but not in the 20th century way that make it seem like the white Christian protagonist is always heroic.

The main character struggles with his English duty and the real life events he witnesses. I particularly liked how gradually he adapted to the corsair life. Near the end of the book, when an old friend recites that ‘the English are civilised and superior to darker skinned people’, he is unable to share that view anymore.

Because of the old adventure novel style, I didn’t love the characters or the romance. They were nice to read about, but they never felt like people to me. The main character makes decisions for love, but those are a bit hard to get behind when I didn’t fully support the romance.
Because it’s a nautical adventure first and the romance is very much a side thing, I didn’t mind it too much.
However, I did not get the ending. After turning his entire life upside down, the main character changes his mind about his love interest on the final page?? ( )

M. Kei has written a swashbuckling historical/nautical novel every bit as exciting as C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower series. I read the latter series as a teenager and enjoyed the coming of age stories in the British Navy during the Napoleonic era. Pirates of the Narrow Seas: The Sallee Rovers is the first in a series also, and I plan to read all of them.

M. Kei's novel is more than the beginning of the exciting adventures of Peter Thornton, a young man who ran away from home when he was just a boy and signed on to the first ship he could find. It is richly detailed in terms of 18th Century history of England, France, Spain, and Northern Africa. The focus is on sailing in times of war, and nautical terms are used that require the use of the Kindle's dictionary and more advanced sources for definitions. The novel offers a very good learning opportunity about sailing in a variety of ships.

The novel also is much more than a replication of the maturation of Horatio Hornblower and description of naval action in war. Peter Thornton is gay with repressed desires held in check by strict adherence to his code of duty as a Lieutenant in the British Navy. Being true to himself and to his allegiance to the Navy cause conflict in his interaction with other characters. Peter's tension makes him rigid and recalcitrant causing his captain to single him out for harsh treatment. Of course, Captain Bishop does not know the reason for the anxiety because Peter keeps it a secret. The charge of homosexuality in British naval service, as in our own military until recently, would lead to harsh punishment.

The novel is not limited to nautical action, history, and sexuality, it also involves religious beliefs. Sallee is a common name for all Muslim corsairs originally residing in the city of Sale in northern Africa. Thornton becomes involved with Sallee men in action saving a Spanish galley in a bad storm. The galley is manned with slaves convicted in Spain of serious crimes. A Muslim slave, "Tangle", is revealed as a high ranking Sallee officer, and Thornton and Tangle develop an interesting relationship made fast by dangerous events and sexual desires. Tangle teaches Thornton about Islam, contrasting it with Church of England beliefs held by Thornton. Over time and through many adventures, Thornton broadens his points of view about religion, duty, honor, and human sexuality.

This is a very interesting and exciting first novel in the Pirates of the Narrow Seas series. I'm looking forward to reading the next two published novels in the series, Iron Men and Men of Honor. M. Kei, an internationally known poet and author of the Journal, Atlas Poetica is now writing Man in the Crescent Moon, a standalone novel about Tangle as a young man. ( )

Pirates of the Narrow Sea, Book 1 – Sallee Rovers by M. Kei is well written nautical adventure fiction with a twist or two, or perhaps three.

The novel is not set during the Napoleonic wars and features, as the title suggests, Sallee Rovers, Barbary Coast corsairs, sailing from the Atlantic coast of what is now Morocco. In this novel the Spanish are the villains while British are not necessarily the heroes. The corsairs are the somewhat more heroic of the novel’s contending forces. The main character is a young, British officer, Lt. Peter Thorton, who for a range of reasons, both logistical and personal, gets caught up with the corsairs and eventually joins them.

This alone is refreshing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with Georgian naval fiction but at times it does seems that the literary waters can get awfully crowded. If every fictional commander who fought at the Battle of the Nile, in one novel or another, actually showed up, there would have been serious danger of collision. It is good to have new ship types and new antagonists from time to time.

The action at sea is set aboard a British frigate, a captured Spanish slave galley and a Spanish galiot, which is similar to a galley, but slightly larger. For ship wonks like myself, the scenes onboard lateen rigged galleys, galiots, and xebecks are a delight. The glimpse at these exotic craft and rigs, at least to Western eyes, was lots of fun. Likewise the chase and battle scenes between square rigged ships, galleys and galiots were also entertaining. The ability of the galleys and galiots to row straight into the wind must have maddened all the captains of square rigged ships, which decidedly could not do the same. One minor quibble I had was in terminology. Kei refers to the latteen spar as an “antenna” from Medieval Latin for a sail yard. The term seems to have largely fallen out of use by around 1650 and sounds rather strange to a modern reader’s ear.

M. Kei is a tall ship sailor himself, having served aboard the Kalmar Nyckel and on skipjacks in the Chesapeake, so the descriptions of the sailing feels fresh and real. He clearly knows of what he writes.
The other unusual element of the Sallee Rovers is the protagonist himself. Lt. Peter Thorton is the son of a minister who ran off to sea after being discovered fondling a school friend. Yes, Peter is gay, suffering from unrequited love with a fellow British officer and totally confused regarding his urges, his honor and his upbringing. If this appeals to you it is definitely a reason to read the book. If it doesn’t necessarily appeal to you, this is not necessarily the reason not to read the book. There is much to enjoy in the novel not involving sexuality. Thorton’s internal conflicts reminded me somewhat of Hornblower’s bouts of self doubt and confusion in the classic C.S. Forester series. The source of Hornblower’s concerns are quite different from young Thorton’s but many of the emotions are not.

One other unusual aspect of the novel is that, as M. Kei notes in the Afterward, the novel is a “period romance” instead of a “historical novel.” He writes, “The difference between a historical novel and period novel is crucial. In a historical novel, the author weaves fictional characters into real events and places in the past. I didn’t do that. Instead I felt free to create places and events to suit the tale while remaining faithful to the cultures of the period.”

The problem I had was that I wasn’t sure what period it was. The book begins with two British officers on the beach after a “treaty between France and England.” I initially assumed wrongly that the treaty was the Treaty of Ameins which would have put the action in the very early 1800s. It later becomes clear that the setting is well before the American Revolution. As a fan of historical novels, this bothered and confused me at times. By the end of the book I wasn’t even sure which century I was in, which as a reader struck me as an unnecessary distraction.

Overall, Sallee Rovers is an entertaining and engaging book, if somewhat on the fringe of the nautical adventure genre, not that there is anything wrong with that. ( )

As usual when I read an historical novel I try to judge it more for the feeling it left me than for the details accuracy. Truth, if the author did a lot of mistakes, I really can’t enjoy it. I think M. Kei is pretty accurate in his description even if, in my historical ignorance, I really am not able to put a precise date for the events: it’s a period in which France and England are not at war between each other, it’s a period when the Sallee Republic was at war with Spain (I for example had to check where and when the Sallee Republic existed).

Regardless the period, sodomy is still a hanging crime in the British naval army and Lieutenant Peter Thornton well knows it. Why he chose to enlist is still a mystery to me, since he ran away from home right for that reason, he was found out groping a fellow boy; before that, he was supposed to follow his stepfather’s trails as a preacher, after that, he has no family and home. He said that enlist was his only chance, but still I think that it was a poor chance due to his preferences in matter of sex.

Other than the obviously trouble he is facing, there is also the little factor that Peter is not exactly a “hero”. He is a good officer, but he is maybe a little to stick to the book. He is good to follow order, but I don’t see him much in the role of captain. Peter has too much of a kind soul, he will forgive everything and everyone.

At the beginning of the novel, he is pining over his fellow lieutenant Roger Perry, who is actually a good guy, but also as straight as it comes. It’s quite an unrequited love, even if Roger loves him as a brother; he would never consider being something more for Peter. When Peter has the chance to leave the English ship to join a corsair crew at the order of a Sallee captain, there is nothing that bound Peter to his home country, no family or love. More, where Roger refused his love, Tangle, the corsair, is instead courting him like no one else did before.

Most of the novel is spent at sail, attacking one ship or the other, mostly Spanish ships, and meanwhile Peter learns to loose a bit of his English contempt to the Moroccan custom. But still, in his heart, he remains a Christian, and at the moment, he is not really ready to change his beliefs; the strange thing is that, even if Peter prefers the company of men, he is totally inhibited when it arrives to sexual relationship. He still considers sodomy a sin, and so he tries to bend “things” to his own comfort level: if he doesn’t perform sodomy, maybe he is not a sinner. I think there is for sure a very negative experience in Peter’s past, when he was a young boy recently enlisted, something he hints at but never goes further in describe, something that still conditions him.

Peter is for sure a complex and deep character, and he is the protagonist of the novel; Tangle, the corsair, is someone who grows in the like of the reader, but, for a reason or the other, I never felt like he was the right man for Peter. He is not bad, au contraire, he is really caring with Peter, he helps him, and, as Peter said, he is probably a better Captain that others Peter served, but still, I felt him more like a pater familiae than a lover for Peter. Probably the reason is that Tangle is too much for Peter, Peter needs someone different to be happy, someone who doesn’t shadow him, someone more at his level, in few words, an average man like Peter is.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0557267196/?tag=elimyrevandra-20