Ned Ryun

A terrific lesson in the history of Bunker Hill (or, Breed's Hill) but with a story line that could have been stronger.

The Adversaries is a self-published book from Ned Ryun who deeply knows, and clearly loves, the history of the time and the battle. (And, full disclosure, whom I know). For that reason, the reader will learn all manner of details about the time and the people involved; some quite interesting and some endearing. Ryun's writing is crisp and keeps the action moving along nicely. His descriptions of battle are particularly admirable, with prose that well describes the chaos and violence of battle without being gratuitous.

The story could be strengthened by better development of characters: outside of the protagonist's obvious external problem, what were his internal problems? What weaknesses and temptations did he struggle with? What faults had he? How did he develop and change over the course of the story in ways that lead to its conclusion? Likewise with the antagonist (who exists but is not well identified): What were his internal desires? How did he change and develop over the course of the story? There was little movement in characters and not much insight into their motives and internal struggles outside of the obvious desire to gain political ascendency by defeating the other in battle.

I suspect this comes from the fundamental difficulty of writing fiction about a real historical character with the admirable desire to be as accurate as possible describing him or her as a person. For a novelist, I imagine that restricting what you can do with a character to actual historical and documented evidence, supplemented by some speculation about what he might have said or done in that real historical scene, would quite restrict how much you could do with the character to add color, interest, twists, and subplots characteristic of most good novels.

Having said that, for readers who want to know about what we call "The Battle of Bunker Hill," The Adversaries is a great tool for discovery apart from a boring history book or lecture.… (más)