Author David Healey recently released the first book in The Sea Lord Chronicles, a naval fiction series with a fantasy element written for the young adult market. First Voyage, is available in paperback worldwide.
When 14-year-old Alexander Hope is sent by his stingy uncle to become a junior officer in the Royal Navy, he has never seen the sea or been very far from the ramshackle manor house where he grew up. He's also never seen a gryphon. There are high expectations for Alexander, whose famous ancestor was Sir Algernon Hope, a sea elemental who defeated the Spanish Armada and saved England from invasion.
England is once again fighting for survival, this time against the Emperor Napoleon. However, Alexander gets seasick before the ship H.M.S. Resolution leaves harbor and is highly embarrassed when he dives to the deck as a gryphon swoops overhead. He also finds himself at odds with an older boy who has the other junior officers bullied. Homesick and feeling out of place, he wishes he had never come aboard the ship.
The tide begins to turn when Alexander strikes up friendships with another ensign and a young aristocrat who pilots a gryphon for the Royal Flyer Corps. Thrown into the hurly burly of life aboard a Royal Navy frigate, Alexander finds new confidence in himself and discovers that he may have inherited his heroic ancestor's ability to manipulate the sea.
As England—and the Resolution—struggle for survival against the forces of the Napoleonists, Alexander's newfound ability could tip the balance of power, but victory comes at a terrible cost. "The Sea Lord Chronicles" mixes the Napoleonic Wars in the Age of Sail, fantasy and a coming-of-age story for an exciting new sea adventure series.
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