1636: Calabar's War

By: Charles E. Gannon, Robert Waters

Narrated by: George Guidall

New entry in the best-selling Ring of Fire series from Nebula- and Dragon-Award nominee Charles E. Gannon and Robert Waters

Domingos Fernandes Calabar started out as a military advisor for the Portuguese in Brazil. But to his superiors, he was still nothing more than a mameluco, a man of mixed blood. Until, that is, the Dutch arrived and he switched sides. Then the Portuguese had a new label for him: “traitorous dog”.

But when Dutch admiral Maarten Tromp arrives, having barely survived the disastrous Battle of Dunkirk, Calabar’s job changes again. Now he has to help engineer a swift Dutch exodus to a safer place before word of Tromp’s defeat reaches Spanish ears. Partnered with the Sephardic pirate Moses Cohen Henriques, the two aid the battered Dutch fleet by striking at the Portuguese and Spanish, both on land and sea. Until, that is, Calabar learns that bitter personal enemies have grabbed his family, put them in chains, and sold them to a slaveship bound for the Spanish Main.

Calabar must now choose: Continue to help the Dutch, or save his wife and children? Tromp and other strong allies want to put an end to slavery, too, but their strategies and timetable are measured in months and years. Calabar doesn’t have that kind of time and can’t rely on their methods. The struggle to recover his family, and to free the millions more suffering in shackles, is one he must win in his own way and on his own terms. Because ultimately, this is not just Calabar’s fight.

This is Calabar’s war.

©2021 Charles E. Gannon and Robert Waters (P)2021 Recorded Books, Inc.

to short

nice, but to fast paced. deserved more time with the dutch and with Brazil and the geoplotics of things.

Interesting for those who enjoy convoluted plots

Calabar’s War was one of the Ring of Fire novels that I found hard to get through.

The main story - Calabar and his quest to find and save his family - only came into focus in the last third of the story. Before that there was much that should have been back story. Calabar is a complicated character and the way the story flowed through every little thing that shaped him and examined all of his reasoning and doubts and hopes was distracting. Once the focus centered on the abduction and rescue the story moved along nicely.

While in reality peoples’ lives do meander and get derailed, it takes a really good author to make those things interesting. The only reason I eventually picked this book up after stopping a little more than halfway through is because I’m a completist. When the next big Ring of Fire novel by Eric Flint comes out I want to understand as much of what’s been going on in that universe as I can.