British author Kenneth Bulmer is best remembered for his
scores of fantasy and science fiction novels, but like a good freelancer, he
wrote a little bit of everything and was especially good at historical and
nautical fiction. Those two genres are combined in the Captain Shark novels, a
two-book series of paperback originals Bulmer wrote for Pinnacle Books in 1975. Both books are available as e-books from Thunderchild Publishing.
It seems unlikely that the protagonist of these books, Captain Sebastian Shark,
was born with that name, but that’s the only way he’s ever referred to in BY
PIRATE’S BLOOD . . ., the first volume. Shark is the captain of the sloop Draco, and he’s not so much a pirate as
he is the mortal enemy of the Spanish, out for revenge on them more than loot.
He does, however, have the usual motley, colorful crew of buccaneers sailing
with him.
Bulmer barely touches on a fairly extensive back-story in which Shark is
captured by Barbary Corsairs as a young man and learns swordplay from another
captive, a Spaniard (the only Spaniard Shark likes) and medicine from an Arab.
(Wasn't Captain Blood actually a medical doctor? It’s been close to fifty years
since I read Sabatini’s novel.) Eventually escaping from the Corsairs, Shark
winds up in the Caribbean, throws in with Henry Morgan, takes part in the
sacking of Panama, and finally becomes the captain of his own ship and crew.
Because many of his friends have suffered at the hands of the Spanish
Inquisition, Shark declares an unofficial war on them.
And that’s where BY PIRATE’S BLOOD . . . begins. It’s a rather episodic tale in
which Shark and his men clash with other pirates, capture a Spanish ship, and
take a beautiful young Spanish noblewoman prisoner. Shark and the girl even
wind up marooned on a deserted island, but things don’t play out the way you
might expect. And before you know it, he’s a prisoner in a castle on a
Spanish-held island, and then who should show up but the beautiful Captain
Elizabeth Wren, a female pirate who is Shark’s former lover, sometimes ally,
and sometimes enemy. The action hardly ever slows down, and Bulmer really packs
this yarn full of twists and turns and then . . . it’s over.
Yep, BY PIRATE’S BLOOD . . . ends in a semi-cliffhanger, and this really leads
me to believe that Bulmer wrote this story as one long novel that Pinnacle
split in two for publication. In those days, short books were in fashion, and
Pinnacle published a lot of ’em in the men’s adventure genre, which includes
swashbucklers like this.
I really enjoyed this book. Bulmer had a good touch with his characters and wrote
some really good action scenes. I’m a landlubber, through and through, but I
was able to follow the sea battles just fine. I would have been really annoyed,
though, when I got to the end and found that the story just stops . . . if I
didn’t have the second and final book, JAWS OF DEATH, queued up on my Kindle
ready to read.
And that’s what I’ll be posting about next Friday.
