Book Review by Maya Cherny of Drake - Tudor Corsair, Book One of the Elizabethan Series

Available from Amazon UK and Amazon US

1564: Devon sailor Francis Drake sets out on a journey of adventure. Drake learns of routes used to transport Spanish silver and gold, and risks his life in an audacious plan to steal a fortune. Queen Elizabeth is intrigued by Drake and secretly encourages his piracy.

Review by Maya Cherny

A fictional account of Francis Drake’s life and rise to prominence. The book is written as the first person narrative, quite reserved and simple, as Drake positions himself. It almost reads as a captain’s log of the voyage, where his entire life is such a voyage.

The book explores his childhood and birth of his love of sea adventures, his first voyage, his rise to commanding a ship, piracy(privateering) and being a consultant to Elizabeth I on the seafarers matters. From a humble beginning as a son of village preacher, his path seem unusually lucky in different aspects.

He had the woman he loved, his found passion and profession, attention of the Queen, enormous wealth and privileges. Of course, there were other things, that might have been better: he lost many of his relatives and friends to sea adventures, he did not have kids of his own, experienced look downs on him from nobility, 

Blamed for bringing trophies/not bringing enough trophies/angering the Spanish, still, his life is a poem of longing for new experiences and reaching them.

He was the first Englishman to circumnavigate the globe, although not intentionally. He befriended locals in new lands, tried out novelty food, seen world wonders and became experienced sailor, commander, cartographer, strategist.

The author outlined interesting personal characteristics, which led me to think of Francis Drake as an observant person, good manager for his crew, with strategic planning and ability to learn on mistakes of others.

I became very much engaged with the story and by the last pages I did not want him to die, even the outcome is known for hundreds of years. Nevertheless even his death seems proper - a sailor parts with the world near far lands at his beloved sea.

Maya Cherny

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About the Reviewer

Maya Cherny is originally from Moscow and lives inSan Jose, California, where she works as a software engineer and mathematician. A ballet dancer at heart, Maya's interest in British medieval and Tudor history began with Philippa Gregory's books and she then continued to look for authors of fiction and non-fiction for that period in British and medieval history. You can find Maya on Facebook.