The Most Bold and Daring Act of the Age was written by E. Thomas Behr and published 10 May 2017.
“At 55, Henry Doyle has it all: wealth, happiness, a loving wife, a young son, and most important, his life − after a violently successful, 35-year career as a spy, soldier of fortune, and as needed, paid assassin. To the men he’s led in battle against Napoleon, he is El Habibka, the legendary Bedouin cavalry general. To the French who hate and fear him, he is more ominous: a shadow − a Sufi ghost – le wraith qui disparaît.
When Napoleon escapes captivity on Elba in 1815 to return as Emperor, Henry comes out of retirement, risking all to stop him – and fails, winding up in an Algerian torture dungeon. His half-brother Peter Kirkpatrick, a dashing American privateer captain, sails for Algiers in a daring, but utterly fool-hardy rescue attempt.
Henry’s wife Dihya, knowing nothing of Peter’s plan, determines to free her husband the only way she can think of: by becoming an odalisque in his captor’s harem. Her weapons are sex, her courage, and her razor-sharp shreu dagger.
The Most Bold and Daring Act of the Age weaves together three journeys: Peter Kirkpatrick’s attempt to fight his way into Algiers to rescue Henry; Dihya’s infiltration of Hashin’s Harem to accomplish the same goal; and Henry’s spiritual journey as he confronts what he believes is the loss of everything he has loved in the world.”*
This book was a DNF** at page 230 of 310.
Apathy is perhaps the one thing that can be most detrimental to a novel. After all, an apathetic reader is an unenthusiastic one. This is the boat I fall into with Behr’s The Most Bold and Daring Act of the Age.
On the topic of boats, a high point of this novel is the intense detail of Peter Kirkpatrick’s exploits on the high seas. He is strong, capable, and always quick to stand in the line of fire. A true captain through and through, Kirkpatrick begins approaching enemies with placating words, and if – or more usually in this book, when – those efforts fail, Kirkpatrick is ready to fight with every fibre of his being. He possesses verbal wit that is as strong as his physical form. Kirkpatrick is a man who not only persists on a wild goose chase to save his brother, but is willing to protect his entire crew during the process. Kirkpatrick takes care of people, and it makes you wish he had more of an emphasis all along.
In fact, perhaps the saving grace of The Most Bold and Daring Act of the Age is the characters. Along with Kirkpatrick, Henry’s wife Dihya is another person ready to go to hell and back for the one she loves. In a time where men were people and women were objects, Dihya is a woman who demands to be heard amidst the cacophony of sexism. She has not broken the mold – she was never in it to begin with. I would find myself turning the pages in hopes of finding a chapter where Dihya was present. She commands every scene she is in, whether in passing or in full. Dihya was, without a doubt, the saving grace of the story.
Unfortunately, Dihya alone couldn’t save this novel. Despite being a strong, confident woman, she wasn’t treated with the respect she deserved. In fact, none of the women were. Of the many, many routes Dihya could have taken to save her husband, she joins a brothel. It is the obvious choice, and a frustrating one. There are barely any women in this novel, and those that are have fleeting purposes. As soon as Dihya joined the brothel, she went from a woman to yet another object to be passed around. Her integrity and strength seem to dissipate in the blink of an eye. (At one point, Dihya is supposedly aroused by another woman shaving and oiling her belle chose, as if she is not completely consumed with fury and trepidation about her mission. It seemed like a cheap way to inject some kind of sexual tension into the novel.) I cannot condone a novel that treats women so blatantly poorly with little concern of the realism that is given to the male characters without a second thought.
Another issue for me, not from a moral standpoint, is the use of drawings to try and explain how certain areas look or the trajectory that a fight follows. I’m not opposed to the notion of including a drawing or two, but in this case they seemed to stand in for proper descriptions of said events. The fight scenes between Kirkpatrick’s boat and other vessels confused me every single time. Sure, I could flip to the end of the chapter to see the actual footprint, but I’m reading a novel, not a picture book. It didn’t sit well with me.
Finally, technically speaking, there are many mistakes that hold the book back from flowing smoothly, such as:
A lack of quotations for dialogue on pages 6, 11, 22, and more.
‘Wisitors’ instead of ‘visitors’ on page 159.
No period on page 52.
Such small details are often overlooked, but contribute greatly to whether a book succeeds or not.
Overall, while The Most Bold and Daring Act of the Age is certainly an adventure, it is one that I do not wish to partake in.
*Blurb by Goodreads
**Acronym stands for ‘Did Not Finish’
The Anxious Princess 