Publishers Weekly gave a nice review to Chris Roberson’s Set the Seas on Fire.
“Roberson adds a pulpy twist to Napoleonic-era naval adventure as the crew of a damaged English frigate finds both paradise and hell on a pair of uncharted Pacific islands. First Lt. Hieronymus Bonaventure, last seen in Paragaea (2006), serves gamely aboard the HMS Fortitude, but longs for something more exciting than harrying galleons across the South Pacific for an aging captain dreaming of padding his retirement stash. When the Fortitude is badly damaged and blown into ‘mare incognita,’ the ‘unknown sea,’ the crew manages to reach a tropical island where the natives are friendly and the ship can be repaired. An attack by bat-winged creatures foreshadows the danger awaiting on the forbidden island of “first volcano,” where Bonaventure leads his men when his native lover, Pelani, is kidnapped. Roberson delivers a fairly standard but well-crafted adventure story for most of the book before delving into the supernatural. The novel is a good bet for adventure fans who want more than your average Horatio Hornblower clone.“
Meanwhile, another Paragaea has cropped up on the radar:
“…does a wonderful job of catching the feel of one of Burroughs’s Mars novels, albeit with some very well-conceived gender variations. As a special bonus, he promises that the marvels of Paragaea, which in Burroughs’s work would have been pseudo-scientific double talk, are explainable using contemporary science. It is a genuinely fun adventure novel.” -Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)-Voyages, Blue Ridge Summit, PA, Feb 2007