Captain Ian Steele, known to his men as Captain Samuel Forbes, and his Sergeant, Conan Curry were fighting the Pushtun in India which had been going on for months. The real Samuel Forbes was fighting his own war in Tennessee with only a selected few aware of the swap of identities and the reason for it. Back home in London, Ella Kasatkin would secretly visit her five-year-old son Josiah whom she’d been told had died at birth. But Ella had discovered Josiah in the care of one of her father’s men, Bert, and his wife, who loved the boy, educating him as he grew. He knew his mother as Aunt Ella. But when Ella’s brutal husband discovered the truth, he shipped Josiah to the colonies of New South Wales in the care of a kind Christian man and his wife.

When Ian and Conan were posted to New Zealand, there was only months left on their commission and both were leaving the army and brutal warfare for civilian life. Ian would live in his past home of New South Wales, catching up with old friends and forging new bonds. Would both men have the future they craved? Was it possible after ten years of killing and brutality to feel safe and secure? They would miss the brotherhood of their men, but peace beckoned.

The Queen’s Captain is the third and final episode of The Queen’s Trilogy by Aussie author Peter Watt and I enjoyed it very much. I felt there was a little too much focus on the fighting and bloodshed, but the main story surrounding Ella, Ian and Josiah was well done. A fitting conclusion to the trilogy, with my recommendation that they be read in order of publication to fully appreciate the characters as they move through the 1800s. Recommended.

With thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for my digital ARC to read in exchange for an honest review.

I haven't read any of the previous books in the trilogy but the author does enough to fill in the highlights of the previous books. I assume they are all as full as action, good guys, bad guys and heroines as this one.
The action flits between the English in the NW of the then India, the US Civil War, the Maori Wars in NZ and the conniving of the upper classes back in England.
This is not a literary masterpiece but it is an entertaining read that is certainly full of storylines with characters who impersonate each other, are secretly in love, are separated by happenstance, are kidnapped, are plotting revenge or fleeing from their responsibilities. Pleasingly it is also sympathetic to the inhabitants the English are fighting.