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Title: Cradle

Author: James Jackson

Narrator: Saul Reichlin

Format: Unabridged

Length: 11 hrs and 17 mins

Language: English

Release date: 11-02-17

Publisher: Whole Story Audiobooks

Genres: Fiction, Historical

Publisher's Summary:

Up the remote James River lies a small fort. This first outpost of the new colony is besieged by natives, beset by danger and sabotaged from within. Christian Hardy is there to protect the new possession on behalf of young Prince Henry, heir to the English throne.

Ranged against him are King James I and his spymaster Robert Cecil as well as his old adversary Realm, who will stop at nothing to wreak vengeance on Hardy. A desperate fight for survival begins....

Critic Reviews:

"This is history - and terrific history - on every page." (Frederick Forsyth on Blood Rock)

"Epic adventure stuff." (Bookseller on Blood Rock)

Members Reviews:

Brilliant!

"Cradle" by James Jackson is a thrilling and compelling historical fiction novel set in the early 1600's that I really enjoyed and found very interesting.

The author has created a brilliant story and brought to life a very vibrant and turbulent time in history when the first permanent British settlers colonised in the Americas. One hundred English settlers in 1607, deposited from three ships, erected a rudimentary wood fort in the wilds of Virginia and named it Jamestown. So began the battle for America....

The frontier setting of the story is fabulously described and truly sets the scene.

I loved the opening chapter, it truly drew me in... "The priests danced and death was close. It was the worst of times to be a prisoner of the natives......" Often quite brutal and violent, this story truly reflects how barbaric the native Indians were and understandably passionate about defending and protecting their land.

I did find the timeline jumped a little and that's the only criticism I would have about the writing style. The narrative is superbly written with some mighty strong characters including Captain John Smith, Realm and Christian Hardy.

James Jackson is well up there in the ranks of historical fiction writers who I believe is also a Sunday Times bestseller. I'd happily read more by him in the future and I may even look up some of his previous successful novels.

Great read

I received a free electronic copy of this historical based on fact novel from Netgalley, James Jackson, and Bonnier Zaffre in exchange for an honest review. Thank you all, for sharing your hard work with me.

The colonization of Jamestown, Virginia in May 1607 was due to the efforts of Prince Henry, son of England's King James, and a conglomeration of English investors known as the Virginia Company of London. King James openly opposed this effort of colonization fearing it would cause another war with Spain, who already had colonies on the southeastern coast of America. the Establishment of Jamestown occurred about 20 years after the discovery that the Lost Colony, Queen Elizabeth I and Sir Walter Raleigh's effort to establish an outpost on Roanoke Island, North Carolina had completely disappeared. (See Wikipedia "The Croatoan Project" for archeological information on this band of settlers uncovered by Hurricane Emily in 1993).

Cradle follows true the problems of the Jamestown settlers as written up by historians at the time. Problems with weather, misunderstandings with the native population and the 'lost' third mission of supply ships were exasperated by infighting in England between the factions of King James and the Virginia Company of London representatives.