Manhattan 1609 (Book one in the Manhattan series)
Harald Johnson
Paper omnibus expected release date: Oct-Nov
Final Score: 5/5
Plot: 5/5
Characters: 5/5
Writing: 4.8/5
This is one of those books where I need to preface it a little. The author is a patron at my library and we struck up a conversation at the desk recently about books and reviews. When I asked if he was writing one, he told me that he'd written three and was putting out a paper omnibus edition of the series sometime in October or November. I offered to read the first one and review it for this blog and my YouTube channel. So, yeah, I have a slightly personal stake in this.
That said, Manhattan 1609 blew me away. From what Harald had said about his subject matter, I had expected an interesting story with lots of history and, because I'm skeptical of the quality of self-published books in general, a mediocre writing style.
This is not your average self-published book.
The story begins with Henry Hudson's trip across the Atlantic, exploring the explorer and his crew as they travel. It shifts then to the perspective of Dancing Fish, a native of the Lanape tribe living on the island of Mannahatta. The introduction of Dancing Fish blew the story wide open for me and I became completely invested in the storyline, his history and his future, and where he might be going. As a teenaged character, he's accessible to younger readers as well as adult readers who may commiserate with his new parents.
Once both sides are introduced, it's time for worlds to collide as Hudson continues to search for the elusive India passage. He comes into contact with the natives and Dancing Fish's tribe, eventually taking the young boy onto his ship as translator, away from everything he's known and the people he cares about to see a wider world off the island.
It's not very often I get to finish a book and immediately write to the author, but that is exactly what I did. I wrote to tell him that I was ecstatic about this book and that I would be recommending the omnibus purchase to my collection manager as soon as I'm back at work. I want everyone to read this and I want to be able to hand people a copy, look at them seriously and say, "You're gonna love it."
The only element of the writing that bothered me and decreased my overall score was a stiltedness early on with the crew of Hudson's expedition. The Hudson chapters before he meets Dancing Fish read like a paraphrasing of someone's journals rather than the development of a unique character. This fades immediately upon his arrival and contact with the local people, but it did make the first few chapters a little sluggish to read.
All in all, though I loved this novella. As soon as there's money in my budget for it, I'm buying the rest of the Kindle editions so I can see where he goes. An excellent historical fiction that gives you all the sense and feel of living in Manhattan back when it was still Mannahatta, still just as full of culture, beauty, artwork, and conflict as it is today.
