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THE BARBARY PIRATESBY WILLIAM DIETRICH
ABOUT THE BOOK:
As dazzling and action packed as the best novels of James Rollins, George MacDonald Fraser, and Steve Berry, The Barbary Pirates will have readers cheering for William Dietrich and his dashing hero, Ethan Gage!
Swashbuckling American explorer and ladies' man Ethan Gage has seen his fair share of danger, having braved the sands of Egypt, the perils of the Atlantic Ocean, and the harsh wilderness of early America. Once more, he finds himself in a desperate race—this time with the Barbary Pirates, a powerful band of Muslim outlaws from North Africa. Also after Ethan is his nemesis—and former lover—Aurora Somerset, member of a dangerous sect called the Egyptian Rite. The prize is the Mirror of Archimedes, an ancient superweapon that, according to legend, once burned a Roman fleet with its power. In 1802, this death ray could tip the balance of power in the Mediterranean, and Ethan must stop the pirates from using it against the American, English, and French fleets.
From the salons and brothels of the Palais Royal of Paris, where the quest for information about his lost love Astiza involves real-life scientists and engineers—including inventor Robert Fulton—Ethan must travel at Napoleon's behest to the canals of Venice, the caves of Santorini, the dungeons of Tripoli, and finally to treachery on the high seas in the Mediterranean.
Can Ethan rescue Astiza without betraying the cause of his own United States? Can he save the two-year-old son he only recently discovered he had without allowing the Egyptian Rite to finally dominate the world? And when the sun rises on the Mirror of Archimedes, will everything Ethan cares about be set afire?
Delivering the fast-paced adventure, uncanny wit, and page-turning historical excitement that readers have come to expect from the masterful William Dietrich, The Barbary Pirates is Ethan Gage at his winningest, most hilarious, and most death defying.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
William (Bill) Dietrich's historical and action thrillers have been translated into 28 languages. Dietrich is also a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist, nonfiction author, and college professor of environmental journalism. He has won the Washington Governor Writer's Award and the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. He currently is exciting readers with his Ethan Gage Adventures, a series featuring an imperfect American adventurer who is not only a protege of the late Benjamin Franklin—but also a gambler, sharpshooter, treasure-hunter and romantic, who manages to get into plenty of trouble with women. Ethan's story entwines with Napoleon Bonaparte's, whom he first meets in Napoleon's Pyramids and is later allied to and odds with in The Rosetta Key and The Dakota Cipher. A fourth novel for the series is in the works.
Dietrich also wrote the Roman-era historical novels Hadrian's Wall and The Scourge of God as well as the earlier thrillers Ice Reich, Getting Back, and Dark Winter.
His book-writing began with The Final Forest: The Battle For The Last Great Trees of the Pacific Northwest and Northwest Passage: The Great Columbia River. A collection of nature essays that first appeared in The Seattle Times is titled Natural Grace. He wrote the text for the Art Wolfe photo book On Puget Sound and essays for books on Skagit and Whatcom counties and Fidalgo Island, his home stomping grounds in the state of Washington. He writes and speaks frequently on the environment.
Dietrich's love of history and fiction was nurtured when growing up in Tacoma. He caught the journalism bug when studying at Fairhaven College and Western Washington University (WWU), where he married his wife Holly. Journalism jobs followed in the Northwest and Washington, D.C., including covering the eruption of Mount St. Helens for the Vancouver, Washington Columbian and the Exxon Valdez oil spill for The Seattle Times. Bill was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University and the recipient of National Science Foundation fellowships that got him to Antarctica and the South Pole, which inspired his first novel.
His first book wasn't started until he was 38, and the first novel—roughed out on an icebreaker—wasn't underway until he was 45. Some men get a sports car in midlife; Bill wrote about Nazis.
In 2006 he began teaching and advising a student magazine called The Planet at his alma mater, WWU. He feels fortunate to have been able to bounce between the fiction and journalism worlds and to be reenergized by his students.
He and Holly live on the edge of Washington's San Juan Islands within eyeball distance of three national parks, but Dietrich loves visiting great cities and crawling around old ruins. He has two grown daughters and can see bald eagles, herons, and raccoons from his office window.
MY REVIEW:
Author William Dietrich’s popular character, Ethan Gage, is back in THE BARBARY PIRATES, which begins in 1802 with a group of famous scholars who are heading to Paris to meet with Napoleon. The scholars are the famous paleontologist, Georges Cuvier from France; geologist extraordinaire, William Smith, from England,; and Robert Fulton, the famous inventor from America. One of Fulton’s invention, the famous Nautilus submarine, in fact, comes into play late in the story.
Gage is an American adventurer who makes friends with the side that is most beneficial to him, be it the British or the French army of Napoleon. Gage is a mix of swashbuckling pirate and dashing hero who often finds himself involved in complicated, spine-tingling circumstances. While being sent to protect these famous men and their ship from the dreaded Barbary Pirates, he is also going there to meet with Napoleon to convince him to agree to President Thomas Jefferson’s offer of what would someday be known as the Louisiana Purchase. Napoleon seems agreeable but wants a favor in return from Ethan. Having heard of the mythical mirror of Archimedes, he wants Gage to set out to find it. It is this that takes Gage and his group across the Mediterranean Sea and into the middle of an international predicament.
Their exciting adventures include getting lost in tunnels carved out by the Knights Templar and discovering one of their shipmates is really a member of the Barberry Pirates. The Pirates are bad enough but then Gage finds out that an old nemesis of his, Aurora Somerset, is in league with them. She is out for revenge and shrewdly, brings back Gage’s long lost love, Astiza. If he doesn’t do what Aurora asks, Astiza will be thrown into prostitution and Ethan’s son, Horus, will be given over to an unsavory gang who will do all means of hideous acts to him.
Will Ethan protect his love and his newly found son, as well as the wise men he has been paid to care for? Can he find the illusive mirror of Archimedes? What will the pirates do to all of them and will Gage be able to stop the evil Aurora?
In THE BARBARY PIRATES, William Dietrich has presented historical fiction with so many well written actual people and characters, that readers are taken in from the first page. He adds just enough humor to allow readers to pleasantly sit on the edge of their seats and try very hard to put the enjoyable book down without much success. This is my first Dietrich novel but won’t be my last. I found Gage to be a character that I would like to read more about and go back and pick up on what I have missed of him already.
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