Genre:
Literary Fiction
Description:
Dublin
to Dieppe to Amsterdam. A routine trip for the cargo ship Kreya, her
Danish crew, and handful of passengers. Brief enough for
undercurrents to remain below the surface and secrets to stay buried.
When
a violent storm disables the vessel, the crew and passengers are
forced to face their humanity and either pull together or face
disaster.
Author:
Sam Youd was
born in Lancashire in April 1922, during an unseasonable
snowstorm.
As a boy, he was devoted to the newly emergent genre of science-fiction: 'In the early thirties,' he later wrote, 'we knew just enough about the solar system for its possibilities to be a magnet to the imagination.'
Over the following decades, his imagination flowed from science-fiction into general novels, cricket novels, medical novels, gothic romances, detective thrillers, light comedies ... In all he published fifty-six novels and a myriad of short stories, under his own name as well as eight different pen-names.
He is perhaps best known as John Christopher, author of the seminal work of speculative fiction, The Death of Grass (today available as a Penguin Classic), and a stream of novels in the genre he pioneered, young adult dystopian fiction, beginning with The Tripods Trilogy.
As a boy, he was devoted to the newly emergent genre of science-fiction: 'In the early thirties,' he later wrote, 'we knew just enough about the solar system for its possibilities to be a magnet to the imagination.'
Over the following decades, his imagination flowed from science-fiction into general novels, cricket novels, medical novels, gothic romances, detective thrillers, light comedies ... In all he published fifty-six novels and a myriad of short stories, under his own name as well as eight different pen-names.
He is perhaps best known as John Christopher, author of the seminal work of speculative fiction, The Death of Grass (today available as a Penguin Classic), and a stream of novels in the genre he pioneered, young adult dystopian fiction, beginning with The Tripods Trilogy.
Appraisal:
White
Voyage’s premise is far
from new—place a group of strangers in a life threatening situation
and see what happens—yet the author’s prose flowed so smoothly,
and his characters felt so true, that I really enjoyed the journey.
The
story rolls along at a sedate pace, but even this impatient reader
was never tempted to skip-read. The interaction between the
characters and the feeling of impending doom that hangs over the
novel kept me engaged. I wanted to know who the winners and losers
would be. Who would unravel? Who would dig deep and find the will to
overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles?
And I
had to wait until the end to find out—as it should be.
FYI:
English
spelling.
Format/Typo
Issues:
None.
Rating:
**** Four Stars
Reviewed
by: Pete Barber
Approximate word count:
70-75,000 words
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