The Dragons of the Storm (In the Land of Whispers #2)

George Robert Minkoff
McPherson & Company (2007)
ISBN 9780929701813
Reviewed by Lynn O’Connell for Reader Views (4/08)


This historical novel is framed as the story of Jamestown’s founding in the early seventeenth century.  However, it is much more.  While readers gain a detailed knowledge of the Jamestown situation and Captain John Smith himself, the majority of the book actually focuses on Sir Francis Drake.  In fact, the book’s title, “The Dragons of the Storm,” is perhaps derived from the Spanish word for dragon, draque.

The book opens as Jonas Profit, an old mariner who is tending Smith’s wound from a stingray, tells about his years serving under Sir Francis Drake.  Throughout the book, Profit focuses on Drake’s two best-known adventures -- first, his sailing around the world in The Golden Hind.  Profit gives incredible detail of the Elizabethan court intrigues and the pressure from the British crown to discover treasures and win out over the Spanish.  The second adventure which Profit recounts is the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1788.

The Jamestown story takes up less than one third of the book.  Minkoff focuses on the hardships that Smith faced and generally conquered – mutiny, attacks by the natives, illness, lack of food, and an unwillingness to work by many of the settlers.  Pocahontas is briefly mentioned in several of the chapters as well.

The second novel of the “In the Land of Whispers” trilogy, Minkoff does an excellent job of providing accurate details about early British exploration of America – and offering believable hypotheses in cases where no recorded history is available.  This novel went beyond many of the other books on this topic, as it delved into the relationships of the place and period – the relationships between the British and the natives as well as the relationships among the settlers themselves.  Minkoff also explored the mystery of Roanoke as well as some of the common beliefs of the time regarding tobacco and alchemy.

The book is designed for readers with significant interest in the Elizabethan time period.  The book is quite detailed, and Minkoff sticks true to Elizabethan language throughout the novel.  Since this book focuses on sailing exploration to such a degree, I compare it somewhat to the novels of Patrick O’Brian.  The difference is that Minkoff takes us further into the personal relationships of the characters – and the role which power plays in the settlement of America.

In all, I found “The Dragons of the Storm” to be a thought-provoking book. It led me to think about what it took for the leaders in the 1600s to stabilize America and compare those leaders to our current ones.  How much has really changed?

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