Wilbur Smith's Birds of Prey is one episode of his long Courteney Adventures series that relate the tales of several members of the long line of adventurers in different times and places. While I've not read the rest of the series, I picked up Birds of Prey, since it is set in the 17th century.
Before I go into the story, I must note that, for a historical fiction enthusiast, the novel has one glaring problem: Wilbur Smith actually uses the foreword to tell the readers that he did not even attempt to use period-accurate names for the ships or firearms in order to make the story more "approachable" to the modern reader. I'm not sure if I'm alone here, but I rather imagined that people read historical fiction partly to actually learn something about the period. But, onto the story and some spoilers that mostly affect the very beginnings of it...
