Tim Severin’s Corsair starts out with a raid by a Turkish slave trader on a city at the Atlantic coast of Ireland, where Hector Lynch and his sister Elizabeth are taken prisoner and brought to the Africa to be sold as slaves. Before they arrive, though, they are separated, and Hector starts on a long journey to find his sister.
The book is set in the 16th century and is able to both draw the reader into a fascinating and fast-paced story, as well as to relay a very accurate historical view of those times. It concludes with a summary of which people and events in the book are historically accurate and where the author took some artistic liberties, another important part of a good historical novel for me.
All in all this is by far the best book I have read in recent times, a must read for fans of historical novels. The follow-up books promise to be about piracy in the Caribbean, so if that is your kind of story, start here, it sets the mood perfectly.
