The Holy Terror

First off, I have to say that I've never read anything in this genre before. And by "this" genre I mean age-of-sail historical fiction. It's possible that this title isn't something that a novitiate to the genre should read, however, it's where I started.Just to get the facts straight though, this isn't romance. There are romantic elements throughout the story but if you're looking for some hot sexy men getting it on, then look elsewhere. Tacking on "An M/M Romance" to the front cover is pure marketing at its best.I have to say that the first half of this book made my brain numb with all the nautical terms. I don't think I'm completely ignorant of these things, but there were full sentences where I had no idea what the words meant. You'd think you'd at least be able to figure out what's going on from the context, but no, I was stumped most of the time, and I had to just read on and hope that I'd understand eventually. I suppose I could have looked up the words but I just didn't care enough. You're basically thrown into the seafaring world headfirst and the author assumes you'll understand, and this was frustrating.In the middle of the book the two main characters tried to find just about every possible horrible situation they could get into that would keep them away from each other. Whether it was one being captured and tortured, the other getting gravely wounded, then the other one being captured and tortured, both men finding sexual gratification with other men, the court martial of one of them for being gay, or when they somehow ended up on the Titanic. That last bit is a joke, but only marginally so.Finally, to add insult to injury, the last few chapters of the book are spent with the two men being angry at each other because they both think the other one wronged them, when it's all just one big misunderstanding. And then the last three pages of the book they finally have sex with each other. That's where it ends.Sigh ...It's not as if I wanted them to jump in bed right from the get-go. And I understand that in those times being gay was an offense that could get you hanged, but waiting until the last chapter for them to finally be with each other was a bit much. And it makes me wonder what they're going to do now that they've had sex. It's not as if they can live with each other happily ever after. The author ends the book with sex even though the rest of the book is all about the trials and lives of the two men. Now that they've had sex everything is perfect, right, and all their previous troubles go away? Who knows, since it's left to the reader to decide. Maybe they get found out and hanged the next week. Finally, another thing that I had a problem with were all the gruesome bits. I wasn't expecting people being strung up with their arms behind their back so their shoulders "ground out of their sockets," or how the people being burned alive were trying to escape their cages and had their fingers chopped off. The part that really made me upset was the 9 year old boy that drowned when he went back to save his pet bird when the ship hit an iceberg and the lower quarters filled with water. And of course we had to have descriptions of how all the livestock had drowned. And then the part when they were visiting the people with the plague in the hospital (yellow fever, I think) and the officers kept getting puked on. It would be interesting to count how many times human excrement, urine, and other bodily fluids are mentioned, because I'm sure the results are staggering.And then there was the sexual encounter with the man with the rotting tooth ... ::shudders::So I have to say that I didn't enjoy this book all that much. If I could, I'd give it 1-1/2 stars because it wasn't the absolute worst thing I've ever read. Maybe it was too "real" for me and it didn't have enough fluff in it, but if a book has the word romance on the cover, I'm expecting at least some romance before I get to the last chapter.I can't say that I'd never read something from this author again, but I'll definitely think twice.