Review: Not your average pirate captive story
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 12, 2012
This book surprised me. It starts out like many somewhat cliched pirate romance stories do - a young woman is kidnapped by pirates and held against her will on their ship until she accepts her new life. But after that beginning it transforms into something quite different...The chapters are told from the perspectives of different characters, of which there are five:Katherine - the captured young woman, formerly the wife of a merchant captain.Griffith - an old pirate captain, dreaming of a quiet retirement in the countryside where he can raise a family. Not having a wife to complete this picture, he, in typical pirate fashion, steals one for himself.Livingstone - the sadistic, hard-as-nails ship quartermaster.Nathan - an idealistic young American man who has run away from his wealthy family to live a life on the high seas.Thatcher - the ship's surgeon, also being held aboard the ship and made to work for the pirates against his will.There are a few other characters who get their own chapters, but they are quite minor. The result of the interplay between these five characters is a more richly textured story than the captain and captured woman back and forth I was expecting. That being said, I do wish we had had a bit more time inside Katherine's head, as she is the character that undergoes the most transformation, and at times that transformation seems a little rushed.Something that also surprised me, and challenged my pop culture notions of Caribbean piracy was the democratic nature of the pirate crew. They vote on major decisions and the captain is elected. After a bit of hunting around online, I found that this aspect of the book is grounded in actual historical research, which was nice to see.The writing style is action-based and fast paced. There is a LOT of gory description in this book, which may turn off some readers, but I only found it tedious at one point (where the description of a battle had just gone on too long, with one gory death after another). Sexual acts are also described, but the book is certainly not sexy or romancy in any way.Overall - it was fun to read a fresh take on a somewhat tired literary cliche.