content: Having fallen in love with Patrick O'Brian's work, I started branching out into other naval fiction set in the same era. C. S. Forester and Frederick Marryat are very enjoyable. Lambdin is abysmal. The King's Coat is very poorly written and edited - subjects and verbs don't agree, there are endless misspellings, and any time he's at a loss, Lambdin throws in sex. The sex is fairly explicit, which is OK, but serves no other purpose than titillation of the reader, which is not. It advances the story in no way at all. Lewrie is apparently intended to be a nautical Flashman, but Lambdin doesn't have anything approaching the skill of George Macdonald Fraser. When Lambdin runs out of inspiration, Lewrie tumbles a wench at length and in great detail. The dialogue tends to sound either suspiciously American and modern, or archly dated. Nothing to recommend this book or the series except the fairly well done descriptions of the handling of the ships.