royal – Robert Raymond’s Blogtorium

August 12, 2021

A real find (DOG EAR)

was on vacation recently, visiting family up north while knocking out a whole lot of novels (I’ve got materials for weeks of reviews now). While rooming at my sister’s, I mentioned I’d like to stop in at any good used book stores. She had one, a little strip mall outlet that had room to grow and lots of books. I dove into it like a shark into a chum-filled ocean. While nosing through the scifi area, I found a collection of novels by one Christopher Nuttall, the Ark Royal series. It had a very interesting concept – it was a […]

September 26, 2021

Ark Royal (Review)

lucked out on this one – was in a used bookstore in Norfolk and came across a block of Ark Royal books, five of the first six, missing the initial copy. Looked like a good series – and self-published too, it seemed – so I bought them. Well, my sister bought them for me, a nice gesture. But I read them. The first book of the Ark Royal series takes place, I dunno, 200 years in the future? Man has reached the stars via tramlines but nations (and navies) still exist. And Ark Royal, an outdated English carrier seventy years […]

October 10, 2021

The Nelson Touch: Ark Royal II (Review)

he Ark Royal series appears to have widespread appeal – at least from what I can tell. Author Christopher Nuttall churned out a bunch of them (seventeen as of 2021). And I can see why they are popular – because they are good. Once again, the titular ship of the series, introduced HERE, is called to duty again. As the only armored ship in the Earth fleets (the rest were only lightly armored death cans), it once more must rise like a phoenix and set sail in finest Star Blazers fashion. This time the idea is a deep penetration raid on […]

August 14, 2022

The Cruel Stars (Review)

eah, yeah, I know, ANOTHER Ark Royal book, this the eleventh in the set. And for The Cruel Stars, we go back to author Christopher Nuttall’s favorite moment in his history, the desperate First Interstellar War between the humans and the Tadpoles, where humans were only just hanging on against a foe with slightly better tech, one that had studied us and played us and destroyed our joint fleet off New Russia. So now the humans are struggling to find ships and manpower to replace their grievous loses. This book tells us one of their many attempts, and this one […]

December 4, 2022

The Right of the Line (Review)

think I always say this, but “Another book of the Ark Royal series…” Yes, this is the fourteenth of the series that started for me in a used bookstore in Norfolk, Va and ended up on my straining bookshelf. For those of you who don’t religiously (because I post these every Sunday?) reviews, the Ark Royal series follows a cast of evolving (and perishing) characters through a near space-n-time setting, that being the English Navy two or so centuries hence. We’ve fought several alien races so far, and nearly gotten squashed, but this time we are facing Earth’s biggest threat – a […]