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This book introduces Thomas Flashman, whose career covers the Napoleonic and Georgian era. This first book covers his adventures with Thomas Cochrane, one of the most extraordinary naval commanders of all time. From the brothels and gambling dens of London, through political intrigues and espionage, the action moves to the Mediterranean and the real life character of Thomas Cochrane.
The fighting that raged in the East during the First World War was every bit as fierce as that on the Western Front, but the titanic clashes between three towering empires - Russia, Austro-Hungary, and Germany - remains a comparatively unknown facet of the Great War. With the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war in 2014, Collision of Empires is a timely expose of the bitter fighting on this forgotten front - a clash that would ultimately change the face of Europe forever.
The Naval Service of the Honorable East India Company, popularly known as the Bombay Marine, operated in romantic areas in perilous times. From the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, from Calcutta to Canton, the Company ships were famous for their speed and daring. The "Bombay Buccaneers" who sailed them were the stuff of legend. For Percival Merewether, 1806 would be a year to remember.
The war with Germany is over. All that is left to secure world peace is to crush the Japanese. HMS Seahound has crept through a minefield in Asian waters to land an armed force of soldiers in enemy territory. Now she lies silent, waiting, on the seabed only a few hundred yards from shore. Inside, the heat is unsufferable, the tension sickening....
In 1877, the Russo-Turkish War is reaching its climax. A Russian victory will pose a threat for Britain's strategic interests. To protect those interests, an ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, is assigned to the Ottoman Navy to ravage Russian supply lines in the Black Sea. In the depths of a savage winter, as Turkish forces face defeat on all fronts, Dawlish confronts enemy ironclads, Cossack lances, and merciless Kurdish irregulars and finds himself a pawn in the rivalry of the Sultan's half brothers for control of the collapsing empire.
Like all young men of a certain age, Harry Gilmour had his own notion of how a naval battle should be. This wasn't it. Norway, 1940: Sub Lieutenant Harry Gilmour's first encounter with battleship action is not the adventure he had hoped for. Faced with a thankless task and ill equipped to handle it, Gilmour's inexperience leads to a damning allegation. His future hangs in the balance.
This book introduces Thomas Flashman, whose career covers the Napoleonic and Georgian era. This first book covers his adventures with Thomas Cochrane, one of the most extraordinary naval commanders of all time. From the brothels and gambling dens of London, through political intrigues and espionage, the action moves to the Mediterranean and the real life character of Thomas Cochrane.
The fighting that raged in the East during the First World War was every bit as fierce as that on the Western Front, but the titanic clashes between three towering empires - Russia, Austro-Hungary, and Germany - remains a comparatively unknown facet of the Great War. With the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the war in 2014, Collision of Empires is a timely expose of the bitter fighting on this forgotten front - a clash that would ultimately change the face of Europe forever.
The Naval Service of the Honorable East India Company, popularly known as the Bombay Marine, operated in romantic areas in perilous times. From the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea, from Calcutta to Canton, the Company ships were famous for their speed and daring. The "Bombay Buccaneers" who sailed them were the stuff of legend. For Percival Merewether, 1806 would be a year to remember.
The war with Germany is over. All that is left to secure world peace is to crush the Japanese. HMS Seahound has crept through a minefield in Asian waters to land an armed force of soldiers in enemy territory. Now she lies silent, waiting, on the seabed only a few hundred yards from shore. Inside, the heat is unsufferable, the tension sickening....
In 1877, the Russo-Turkish War is reaching its climax. A Russian victory will pose a threat for Britain's strategic interests. To protect those interests, an ambitious British naval officer, Nicholas Dawlish, is assigned to the Ottoman Navy to ravage Russian supply lines in the Black Sea. In the depths of a savage winter, as Turkish forces face defeat on all fronts, Dawlish confronts enemy ironclads, Cossack lances, and merciless Kurdish irregulars and finds himself a pawn in the rivalry of the Sultan's half brothers for control of the collapsing empire.
Like all young men of a certain age, Harry Gilmour had his own notion of how a naval battle should be. This wasn't it. Norway, 1940: Sub Lieutenant Harry Gilmour's first encounter with battleship action is not the adventure he had hoped for. Faced with a thankless task and ill equipped to handle it, Gilmour's inexperience leads to a damning allegation. His future hangs in the balance.
In which, without really intending to, Otto Prohaska becomes official war hero no. 27 of the Habsburg empire.
"A retro techno-adventure story that falls somewhere between Tom Clancy and Patrick O'Brian... top notch military fiction with a literary flair." (Publishers Weekly)
In the spring of 1915, a young Austro-Czech naval lieutenant Ottokar Prohaska finds himself posted to the minuscule Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian Submarine Service in the Adriatic port of Pola. In some trepidation at first, because he has no experience whatever of submarines, his fears are soon set at rest when he discovers that nobody else has either: least of all his superiors. There follow three and a half years of desperate World War One adventures fighting for the House of Habsburg aboard primitive, ill-equipped vessels, contending not just with exploding lavatories and the transport of Libyan racing camels but with a crew drawn from a dozen different nationalities-and a decaying imperial bureaucracy which often seems to be even more of an enemy than the British, the French, the Italians and the sea itself.
After surmounting all this to become - accidentally - Austria Hungary's leading U-boat commander and a holder of its highest military decoration, the closing months of 1918 see him and his crew returning aboard a damaged boat from the shores of Palestine, only to find that the homeland they have fought for so doggedly over the previous four years is now in the final stages of collapse, and that they themselves are effectively stateless persons; sailors without a navy returning to a country which no longer has a coastline.
"Fresh, vivid, and without peer in the current market." (Booklist)
"Stark realism and finely crafted humor.... Biggins's use of narration, his thorough knowledge of the Adriatic, and good technical detail make this... compelling reading." (Library Journal)
Quite different than what I had expected but well worth the investment of time. Naval history from a period and place rarely covered. A few choice leadership lessons along the way. Senior sailors should listen to this book. I am glad I didn't try to read it just based on the huge number of foreign terms.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
First. I loved the ability of the narrator to speak English clearly and beautifully. Second. the story was of a Captain with a heart who happened to be on the wrong side of history and the first world war fighting with primitive submarines in support of a government which was so full of ego and arrogance and incompetence that they had doomed themselves from the start. Fascinating view of war in the eastern Mediterranean against an enemy most would not recognize as such. Well worth the listen and money. A favorite sea story.
This is an entertaining book and the British narrator enhances the telling with the accent - giving it a European sound.
A very enjoyable book with a bit of fun history that we very rarely exposed too.
Who knew? More about the WWI Austrian/Hungarian military and navy than (I surmise) most non-scholars ever suspected. Protagonist enormously engaging: Prohaska is presented as a reasonable, compassionate man of his time coping as best as possible amidst the horrors of nascent submarine warfare waged by an imminently moribund empire and its relentlessly partisan, hide-bound bureaucrats. Caveat? I suspect the parts for download are labelled incorrectly: listen to Part 2 first. I didn't, but enjoyed the story immensely, regardless. Also, another marvelous read by voice actor Nigel Patterson: his smooth delivery of characters' paragraph-length names and titles was a hoot in itself. Again, do Part 2 first, and you'll look forward to additional installments even more than I am.
A fantastic historical novel that deftly weaves reminisces of life aboard Austro-Hungarian U-boats, fighting for a sclerotic Empire in a forgotten theatre of war. There are both comedic moments, elements of pathos and bags of action-packed adventure. At points it can feel a bit disjointed as the life story cuts backwards and forwards a bit (the chronology being completed by the other Prohaska novels). Finally, the narrator is clear and concise, although his foreign accents can lean just a smidge towards the 'Allo 'Allo kind.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful
Read the book and listened to the audio throughly enjoyed both. Recommended to anyone who likes sea yarns.
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It is so good to see this first of the all-too-short series of Otto Prohaska novels available in audio, and I hope the others follow. They are well researched, engrossing, historical novels largely set in WW1 but a part not usually covered in fiction, the Imperial and Royal Austro-Hungarian navy. The series chronicle the short naval career of Otto Prohaska, a character who comes over rather as a good Harry Flashman. The detail, the atmosphere, the penetrating personal observations, the sheer high-quality storytelling of Flashman are all therbut Prohaska is a brave and honourable, if also realistic and rather sardonic, man. For a historical novel, a war novel, a sea saga, all with a difference, start the Prohaska series here and enter into a different, recent, but totally vanished world.