sa090
Written on Aug 28, 2019
Was the final book I needed for my NEWTs exam prompts (A for Transfiguration) and by the far the most cringe worthy book I read in the entire year so far.
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I’m big on pirates, I love the whole concept of spending your life in search of treasures and exploits, while not caring about the rules or any of the sort. So having female pirates was my main selling point for this one other than the prompt, with the whole sometimes unneeded “diversity” movement, it’s not hard to find what I need to fulfill the prompt if I grab whatever off the shelf, but that’s just me. Anyho’s I expected the book to be this high paced action with female characters doing badass things throughout the whole thing, that to be fair, lasted for a couple of chapters before we have a guy onboard and my heroine becomes an inconsistent dumbass who can’t think straight because of her being in a YA universe.
I may sound condescending of this fact, but I honestly have yet to read about a more irritating heroine than Grace. The plot or rather, synopsis, makes it sound like she’ll be going through this internal struggle throughout the book, but honestly, the struggle wasn’t that apparent for the majority of the book and nothing much actually happened in terms of expected pirate badass-ery, they were either sailing the ship without focusing on that part of the journey, in ports as expected or having one minute fights that showed nothing but how pirates should act and how Grace is quick to say one thing and then immediately change it later for reasons only she knows.
When you have a plot this simple or a plot that requires a journey before it becomes something, focusing on the world around me or the character I’m with becomes the more interesting thing to do and despite the story, brief world building and the Mordgris actually being very very interesting, Grace destroys every single effort made by Jennifer Ellision. It’s the first time in a while that I wish the book had different POVs so I can stop being in her head for a bit, character like Celia or Ilene are onboard and those make the more interesting ones of the bunch, and despite the obviousness of the betrayal and all of that. I’ll still take anyone over Grace.
It’s a saddening thing to see that the story has some interesting things going for it, like the whole Mordgris mystery and how Grace is tied up with it (which is also somewhat obvious btw), before she opens her mouth or goes through a monologue that makes me question why she’s around. I kind of wish that those moments of hers were spent upon building the world a bit more, knowing more about Grace’s background, the other pirate crews maybe or something just as interesting.
In the end I think the biggest issue this book has is its length, Jennifer Ellision has a very clear way of writing and it’s so easy to spend a while reading through the book without feeling bored. That being said however, she seemingly likes to take her time familiarizing me with her setting despite the lack of world building and more noticeable character development, which just made the book feel like it was over as the pace was picking up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Btw spoilers below as to why Grace annoyed me as much as she did.
Final rating: 2/5