Mutiny on the Mary Celeste

Another bloody boat. You know I get seasick, and yet still you insist on casting me on Victorian vessels that lurch about every time a storm gets up. Winds of thirty-five knots we’ve had this voyage. The forecastle reeks of vomit and the Captain’s baby daughter never stops yowling.

Everyone knows there are only two things worth writing about: sex and death. We didn’t think we’d luck out as guests at a Bacchanalian orgy, but if you must go the death route every time you dip into historical fiction (and really, we’re starting to think you’re a little on the morbid side) we hoped you’d at least have the decency to give us an exciting end. Instead, it looks like you’re planning to drown most of your cast. Again.

Didn’t you get your fill of maritime tragedy with the story about the Titanic? That was actually quite a good laugh: rushing for the lifeboats disguised as a woman, beating off the riff-raff with an oar. So far, this is dull as ditchwater. Day after boring day sailing the Atlantic with a hold full of denatured alcohol. You can’t even drink the stuff.

I’m beginning to think this is another failed flash. One of the ones where you paint a beautiful picture of the ocean and the gulls and the endless rolling waves and completely forget about the plot. Well, your characters have had enough. We’re not featuring in another of your sodding prose…