The Baltic Fleet - Journey

A Critical Review of: "The Baltic Fleet - Journey"

As the second installment in Tony Flanigan’s trilogy, The Baltic Fleet – The Journey attempts to deepen the tragicomic portrait of the Second Pacific Squadron’s doomed voyage, directly channeling the voice and perspective of Ivan Petrovich Kuznetsov from Dogger Bank. Stylistically consistent—right down to the vodka-soaked narration and recurring motifs of paranoia, incompetence, and self-inflicted chaos—the story dutifully expands on the fleet’s post–Dogger Bank disgrace. Yet where the first tale had a singular, harrowing climax that grounded its dark humor in consequence, this sequel meanders through a series of loosely connected mishaps: phantom enemy sightings, the severed telegraph cable at Tangiers, the Madagascar menagerie, a botched funeral salute, and officers lost to opium. These episodes, while historically resonant and occasionally vivid, lack narrative cohesion or emotional escalation. Ivan’s passive role—“I was ashore briefly,” “Sergei filled me in,” “details are hazy”—undermines his reliability as both witness and protagonist, reducing him to a framing device rather than a character shaped by events. Worse, the trauma of Dogger Bank—Pavel’s death, the chaplain’s loss—is barely reckoned with; instead, it’s buried beneath gags about lemurs and crocodiles, dulling the trilogy’s moral arc. The tone remains engagingly sardonic, and Flanigan’s affection for historical eccentricity shines, but without psychological depth or forward momentum, The Journey reads more like a footnote than a progression. For Gumroad readers who enjoyed the first story’s irreverent energy, this offers familiar rhythms; for those seeking narrative evolution or thematic maturation, it stalls mid-voyage.