2011; 322 pages. New Author? : Yes. Genres : Historical Fiction; War; South
America. Overall Rating : 7½*/10.
I don’t want to sound pedantic, but the phrase
“American Revolution” is rather vague.
For starters, it can
refer to North, Central, and/or South America.
By the early 1800s, all those areas had experienced wars for
Independence.
The insurrections in South
America were scattered throughout that continent. Brazil was
trying to gain independence from Portugal; everywhere else the European
colonizer was Spain. The most famous
revolutionary leader down there was Simon Bolivar, and rightfully
so. Bolivia is named for him, and his “liberation
area” includes territory from Venezuela down through Peru.
In the lands south of there,
Chile and Argentina, different leaders led the uprisings, most notably José de San Martin
and an Irish dude named Bernardo O’Higgins. You’ve probably never heard of either of
them.
A
Storm Hits Valparaiso chronicles that part of the “American Revolution”, and will help you get acquainted with José de San Martin.
What’s To Like...
There are six storylines to follow in A Storm Hits Valparaiso. They focus on seven main
characters, who are (along with their starting points):
Catalina
Flores (in Chile)
Lord
Captain Thomas Cochrane (in Scotland)
Diego
and Jorge Ramirez (in Argentina)
Zé
(in Brazil)
José
de San Martin (in Spain)
Pacha
(in Peru)
Timewise, most of the story
takes place in 1811-1822 CE, although the Epilogue extends that timeframe quite
a bit, since it has a “whatever happened to . . .”
format. All of the main characters do a
lot of moving around, which is not surprising since wars were underway throughout
South America and Europe.
The seven protagonists get
more or less equal billing in the first half of the book, but gradually José de
San Martin emerges as the primary one. After
checking in Wikipedia, I was pleasantly surprised how many real-life people and actual
historical events get worked into the storyline.
The text is delightfully
sprinkled with Spanish colloquialisms, such as chica,
puerca, aguardiente, campesinos, and claro; as well as some, erm,
“colorful” terms, such as maricon, culos,
bastardo, and putas. We’ll let you look up the translations of
those. There’s also a smattering of
Portuguese (quilombos) and French (Vive le Roi!
Vivent les Bourbons!), plus one English spelling (as opposed
to American): offences.
The ending brings closure to
each of the six storylines. Some of the
protagonists are reunited; some have left South America; some have been laid to
rest six feet underground. Overall, things have changed in South America: the revolutionaries have gained the upper hand.
Kewlest New Word ...
Scrivener (n.)
: a clerk or scribe.
Ratings…
Amazon: 3.6*/5, based on 189 ratings
and 106 reviews.
Goodreads: 3.44*/5,
based on 202
ratings and 49 reviews.
Excerpts...
“Let me make sure I’ve got this right. Mr. Jackson has called a meeting with himself
to see if he is going to increase the amount he is charging himself for such
meetings."
“If you want to put it like that, sir, but
I assure you everything is above board.
“We shall see. Where is this meeting taking place?”
“I’m afraid I’m not aware,” said the clerk.
“Where is Mr. Jackson’s office?”
“Which one?”
“Either!” (pg. 63)
In the end, it didn’t matter; they didn’t
care who he was or where he was from, as long as he signed up. The recruiting officer gave Zé a short speech
on the army and the war, which he only partly understood. Spanish wasn’t that different from
Portuguese, but everyone spoke so quickly, chopping words, running one sentence
into the next. Only one part was easy to
understand. The penalty for desertion
was mentioned several times: muerte.
Death. (pg.
117)
Kindle Details…
It appears that A Storm Hits Valparaiso is no longer available in the e-book format I read it in. The paperback version costs $25.59 at Amazon. David
Gaughran offers two other Historical-Fiction e-books at Amazon: Liberty Boy for $4.99, and Mercenary for free.
“A political priest
is like a religious general; a castle with sails.” (pg. 178)
Profanity in A Storm Hits Valparaiso is a bilingual
affair. In addition to the Spanish words
already mentioned, I counted eight cusswords in English in the first 50% of the
book,. There was one roll-in-the-hay later on.
That’s really pretty clean for a storyline chronicling the brutality of
war in the 19th century.
A number of reviewers
criticized the six different storylines in the book, finding it hard to
remember who was doing what and where.
They have a point, but happily I keep notes while reading; so
this was not a problem for me.
I only caught a couple of
typos, namely: back lads/back, lads,
town?s/town’s, and reigned/reined. Kudos to the editors, they did a fine
job. And although Valparaiso is one of many settings in the tale, it is not a major one, so I never did figure out why
it rated being part of the title.
But these are quibbles. In World History classes in college, José de
San Martin was for some reason my favorite South American revolutionary and I
always wondered a.) why he didn’t get as
much ink as Simon Bolivar, and b.) what
ever happened to him. Thanks to David
Gaughran, I now have answers.
Overall, I enjoyed A Storm
Hits Valparaiso, primarily because it covers an important era in History
that rarely gets any literary attention.
You might be a bit disappointed that, for most of the book’s fictional
characters, the ending is not a “they lived
happily ever after” scenario.
But that holds true for the historical characters here as
well. War is
Hell.
7½ Stars. One last teaser. At one point there is a “talking sword” in the storyline. When’s the last time you read a Historical Fiction novel with one of those in it?
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