- Paperback: 321 pages
- Publisher: House of Stratus; New edition edition (18 Sep 2000)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1842324772
- ISBN-13: 978-1842324776
- Product Dimensions: 20 x 13.6 x 2.2 cm
- Average Customer Review: 1.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 462,491 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Ramage's Challenge
and over one million other books are available for Amazon Kindle .
Learn more
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Trade In this Item for up to £0.25
Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in Ramage's Challenge for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £0.25, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
|
Product details |
More About the Author
Product Description
Book Description
The Napoleonic Wars are raging and a group of eminent British citizens have been taken captive in the Mediterranean by French troops. The Admiralty traces their location and sends the valiant Lord Ramage to affect their release. As Ramage and his crew negotiate the hazardous waters off the Tuscan coast, they soon begin to doubt the accuracy of their instructions. Ramage comes to realize that in order for his mission to succeed he must embark upon a fearful and highly dangerous escapade where the stakes have never been higher. Ramage's Challenge is another action-packed naval adventure from the masterful Dudley Pope.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is one of the oddest books I've read in the Royal Navy genre. Pope must have been out to lunch when he wrote this one. There are three things that make this such a weak book. First, Pope keeps repeating himself. We're told something, and a few pages later, we get exactly the same thing. Did Pope just forget what he had written? Although this series really needs to be read in order, Pope does give enough review in each book for each to be read by itself. But within the same book?
Secondly, the premise of the story is just not very interesting; Ramage is sent out to rescue some admirals, generals, and lords who were vacationing in France during the peace and are captured and interned in Italy. He rescues the men through a ruse, but their wives are kept somewhere else (more about this later). The battle is good, but too short. And ya gotta read a LOT to get to the short battle. All in all, it's just not very interesting. Finally, execution of the story is absolutely ridiculous. Ramage has orders from on high to rescue the officials--no mention of their wives. After the initial rescue, he has followed his orders to the letter of the law and can return to England. The question remains whether he'll rescue the wives as well. The silly part is that none, not one, of the men try to take over or even convince him to do so! Even the admiral sits by and watches Ramage mull everything over in his mind. Either these guys are fools or don't care much about their wives. I don't know many men who would just let their wives rot in jail--wouldn't every guy pull rank (orders be damned!), take over the ship and rescue his wife? Of course! The whole thing is just plain silly.
Repetition, dullness, and silliness make this a weak, very weak, book.
Secondly, the premise of the story is just not very interesting; Ramage is sent out to rescue some admirals, generals, and lords who were vacationing in France during the peace and are captured and interned in Italy. He rescues the men through a ruse, but their wives are kept somewhere else (more about this later). The battle is good, but too short. And ya gotta read a LOT to get to the short battle. All in all, it's just not very interesting. Finally, execution of the story is absolutely ridiculous. Ramage has orders from on high to rescue the officials--no mention of their wives. After the initial rescue, he has followed his orders to the letter of the law and can return to England. The question remains whether he'll rescue the wives as well. The silly part is that none, not one, of the men try to take over or even convince him to do so! Even the admiral sits by and watches Ramage mull everything over in his mind. Either these guys are fools or don't care much about their wives. I don't know many men who would just let their wives rot in jail--wouldn't every guy pull rank (orders be damned!), take over the ship and rescue his wife? Of course! The whole thing is just plain silly.
Repetition, dullness, and silliness make this a weak, very weak, book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I read this book while on holiday and selected it from the bookcase as it was the only Ramage story amongst a collection of Jack Aubrey adventures. I have read all of the Hornblower novels and quite a few Jack Aubrey, so I am familiar with the genre. Like other reviewers I quickly became perplexed and wondered where this novel was going (or not as the case might be) the first half of the book is a cross between a history lesson of southern Europe and the Mediterranean and a travelogue of SW Tuscany. It was only when I found out later that Pope had spent some time living on a boat on this part of the Italian coast I realised why we were getting so much detail here. I became frustrated at Pope's annoying habit of recycling information and filling out the book with excessive details of Ramage's previous adventures. The march to Pitigliano seemed to be shaping up to be the prelude to a major part of the story and I even had the marine lieutenant Rennick and the Calypso's exec officer Aitken down as token dead guys. But no this fizzled out and they all returned empty handed to the ship. The whole premise of the novel was simply not credible and the lack of depth and intervention displayed by the first freed group of hostages was very unlikely. Pope's style is to allow the narrative to build slowly with a lot of peripheral information and just when you are expecting some action it then returns to the doldrums. The chase involving the French frigate was the only exciting part in the entire book but it came too late. The novel is ok if all you wish is easy reading but Ramage appears indestructible. This is the first Ramage novel I have read and it will be the last.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Should be renamed "READER'S Challenge"
26 Jun 2008
Format:Paperback
This is one of the oddest books I've read in the Royal Navy genre. Pope must have been out to lunch when he wrote this one. There are three things that make this such a weak book. First, Pope keeps repeating himself. We're told something, and a few pages later, we get exactly the same thing. Did Pope just forget what he had written? Although this series really needs to be read in order, Pope does give enough review in each book for each to be read by itself. But within the same book?
Secondly, the premise of the story is just not very interesting; Ramage is sent out to rescue some admirals, generals, and lords who were vacationing in France during the peace and are captured and interned in Italy. He rescues the men through a ruse, but their wives are kept somewhere else (more about this later). The battle is good, but too short. And ya gotta read a LOT to get to the short battle. All in all, it's just not very interesting. Finally, execution of the story is absolutely ridiculous. Ramage has orders from on high to rescue the officials--no mention of their wives. After the initial rescue, he has followed his orders to the letter of the law and can return to England. The question remains whether he'll rescue the wives as well. The silly part is that none, not one, of the men try to take over or even convince him to do so! Even the admiral sits by and watches Ramage mull everything over in his mind. Either these guys are fools or don't care much about their wives. I don't know many men who would just let their wives rot in jail--wouldn't every guy pull rank (orders be damned!), take over the ship and rescue his wife? Of course! The whole thing is just plain silly.
Repetition, dullness, and silliness make this a weak, very weak, book.
Secondly, the premise of the story is just not very interesting; Ramage is sent out to rescue some admirals, generals, and lords who were vacationing in France during the peace and are captured and interned in Italy. He rescues the men through a ruse, but their wives are kept somewhere else (more about this later). The battle is good, but too short. And ya gotta read a LOT to get to the short battle. All in all, it's just not very interesting. Finally, execution of the story is absolutely ridiculous. Ramage has orders from on high to rescue the officials--no mention of their wives. After the initial rescue, he has followed his orders to the letter of the law and can return to England. The question remains whether he'll rescue the wives as well. The silly part is that none, not one, of the men try to take over or even convince him to do so! Even the admiral sits by and watches Ramage mull everything over in his mind. Either these guys are fools or don't care much about their wives. I don't know many men who would just let their wives rot in jail--wouldn't every guy pull rank (orders be damned!), take over the ship and rescue his wife? Of course! The whole thing is just plain silly.
Repetition, dullness, and silliness make this a weak, very weak, book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Not up to the usual Pope standards
6 Mar 2011
Format:Paperback
Oh Mr. Pope - not up to your usual standards. Had yourself a nice visit to Italy, hmmm? Decided to share your knowledge with us? Only problem is - we're expecting a *nautical fiction* series, not an Italian travelogue. First half of the book expounds on the history, current customs, agricultural practices and land formations of Tuscany. B-o-r-i-n-g. Seems as if Mr. Pope wrote himself into a corner when Sarah's ship goes missing during Ramage #14 and he had only a short story's worth of idea of how Ramage could get her back. Once we got down to the hostage-rescuing action at sea, things were fine, but boy did we have to wade through junk to get there. No joke, first half of book is on land and nothing happens. All of the Ramage books have short explanations of previous events so that a reader can pick up any book and follow the plot, but as you read further into the series, these repeats become tiresome, especially when the stuff being repeated doesn't seem important. Do we really need to know about the various winds in the Med, again, or Southwick's prowess with his two-handed sword, which he uses only once in this book, and "off-camera" to boot? It's almost as if Mr. Pope has a list of things to include in every book, with no regard as to whether or not the info is important to a reader's understanding of that particular book. Overall, my advice to folks reading the series - you can skip this one without missing anything - there's no character development, we don't learn anything more about Ramage or Sarah or any of the guys. Just go directly from Ramage #14 to #16, and accept that, through the magic of fiction, Sarah is back. Oh and P.S., that LT Hill, the new LT from the mutiny trial, is a good guy (we do learn that in this book). Or, as another reviewer suggested, just read the last half, starting from Chapter 12.
4 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Weak link in the Ramage chain
12 Oct 2002
Format:Paperback
I've read all the Ramage novels and I'm a fan. This is just a friendly suggestion to the reader that when you get to this one you might consider to proceed rapidly through the first half of the book. Read the first sentence of each paragraph and then decide whether to read the whole paragraph or not. The author gets especially carried away with descriptions of things we, the seeker of naval action, don't give a damn about -- local vegetation, birds, geographical names (and their histories). Mr Pope can be forgiven for waxing on about his interests (because he has given us so many exciting stories up to this point), but I voted to pass up large portions.
Make no mistake, the exciting part does eventually arrive, but even then is a bit rushed and abbreviated. And, the ending definitely leaves a bunch of loose threads (e.g., what happens to the duel between Ramage and the obnoxious General?).
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
