The Fox-Sherwood Smith,

The Fox
Sherwood Smith,
Daw, August 2007, $25.95, 704 pp.
ISBN 9780756404215

Exiled unfairly from home, Indevan makes a life for himself at sea eventually becoming the leader of a mercenary company that guards ships with valuable cargo from pirates. One day his luck runs out and he is captured by the pirate Gaffer Walic. He pretends to be Stupid until the time is right for him to lead a mutiny. He is a natural born leader and commander and most of pirates in Gaffer’s mini armada agree to follow him although he trusts only the people who were captured with him.

He decides to be a pirate who hunts other pirates something his former clients are thrilled to hear. He goes after the most brutal pirate leaders and then takes on the Brotherhood as a whole. His homeland is at war with the Venn who want their land to feed their ever growing population so he goes hunting Venn and eventually goes into the Venn empire as a spy to learn what their invasion plans are. Back at home, his older brother is murdered and he is the next heir to the principality of Choread Elgaer. The royals and his friends from home find it impossible to find him as Inde doesn’t have a clue about all the changes that have happened and the different players in power since he left the kingdom.

THE FOX takes up exactly where INDA left off and readers will be thoroughly transfixed by Inda’s adventures. Although young he leads a group of sailors into fighting using military strategies people decades older than him would not think to employ. Sherwood Smith is a great world builder who makes the kingdom, the Venn Empire and the other places Inda travels seem very real. There is plenty of action but not at the expense of creating believable characters who make for stirring high seas adventures.

Harriet Klausner