Susan Cooper is a Grand Old Woman of children’s fantasy, with her The Dark is Rising sequence adored by those too old for Harry Potter, but more recently she has turned to historical fiction. King of Shadows, about an American boy who changes bodies with an Elizabethan actor and plays the first Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, is now a set text in many schools, and Victory, Cooper’s latest novel, is also a time-slip story. Molly is an English girl whose widowed mother has uprooted her to a new family in Connecticut. Desperately homesick, she finds an old copy of Southey’s Life of Nelson, with a fragment of the Victory’s flag, and a letter mentioning Samuel Robbins. Half the novel is narrated by Sam, and half is about Molly.

Sam’s is by far the more interesting story. An 11-year-old farm boy who is press-ganged into serving aboard HMS Victory, Nelson’s ship at the Battle of Trafalgar, his story follows the pattern set down by Powder Monkey and Secrets of the Fearless. Initially wretched, Sam finds his sea-legs and eventually becomes a “powder monkey” who brings gunners the next charge of gunpowder. The ruthless, relentless nature of the officers who use pressed men is neither glossed over nor hammed-up, and while the reader fears for Sam, it is his kindly uncle, a rope-maker who should have been exempt from the press, who suffers most.

Cooper has always been good at showing the way adults and children form a bond of trust, but in this book there is nobody with the reassuring magical powers of Uncle Merry or Oberon to make sure it turns out safely. The uncle’s skill at rope-making wins them increasing favour on board, but Sam feels “like a lost ant in a giant ant hill”. He gets a job looking after chickens for the ship’s cook, and hates the dark and stink of below-decks life. His domestic duties loom as large as his training as a sailor, and are totally convincing.

Details about the food on board ship, from the greasy salt pork or beef, with its valuable “slush” used to grease the ship’s rigging or spread on bread, like the boys’ eagerness to swap their grog for treats or money, are exactly the kind of thing that a boy of this age really cares about.

I am not so sure, however, if it is what a child enjoys reading about. Victory, though meticulously researched and written with economy and sympathy, covers remarkably similar territory to Paul Dowswell’s Powder Monkey, while failing to be an equally gripping read. There are no villains to be foiled, and although Sam eventually gets to see some action at the Battle of Trafalgar, losing two fingers and his uncle, the fuse is too long.

The time-slip sections don’t help. Back in our own time, Molly travels to London to stay with her adored grandparents and gradually finds out more about her dead father, lost at sea. She and her grandfather visit HMS Victory at Portsmouth, and eventually the link between Molly’s family and Sam’s becomes clear. It doesn’t quite come off, but then Master and Commander set a high water-mark for other writers.

WHAT'S MORE

SECRETS OF THE FEARLESS (11+)
by Elizabeth Laird
Macmillan, £12.99

A rollocking yarn with French spies, a cross-dressing heroine and some heartfelt romance.

PETER RAVEN UNDER FIRE (12+)
by Michael Molloy
Chicken House, £11.99

Heroic teenage officer must rescue his girlfriend from sadistic plantation owners in the Caribbean.

POWDER MONKEY (12+)
by Paul Dowswell
Bloomsbury, £5.99

Thrilling tale, exceptionally well written and affecting.

NELSON (6+)
by Richard Brassey
Orion, £3.99

Delightful cartoon biography in the Brilliant Brits series.

ADMIRAL NELSON (10+)
by Sam Llewellyn
Short Books, £4.99

Dramatic biography in the Who Was . . . series.

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