Book of the day: The Coming of the Whirlpool by Andrew McGahan
Later, when he was the greatest mariner of his day and famous throughout the Four Isles, he was to be known by many names. He would be called the Last of the Ship Kings, even though he was nothing of the sort. He would be called the Young Admiral, and the Scapegoat’s Captain. He would be called The Man Who Sailed Off The Edge Of The World, and a good many other things besides; a traitor and rebel by his numerous enemies, a hero by his few friends.
But his real name, the name of his birth, was simply Dow.
Dow Amber.
And strange as it may seem, he was not born to the sea. As this volume – the first of his extraordinary history – will tell, his childhood was, in fact, a landlocked one, and it was only through peculiar chance and gravest hazard that he came to voyage upon the open ocean at all.
