Seventeen-year-old Alosa is on a secret mission to find a blimey treasure map for her father, the universally feared King Pirate, who other pirates pay tributes to for safe sea passage. Alosa lets herself get captured aboard a ship whose cruel Captain, Draxen, represents the brute pirate archetype while his brother and second-in-command, Riden, has a sense of honor that keeps bro in check. Riden is the brains of the twosome and becomes attracted to Alosa when she is held captive aboard their ship. Alosa's regular cell guards represent stupid pirates that add comic relief. Alosa seems overly-confident that she can control the men in authority and have a successful mission. Failure is never an option when it comes to her father. When things fall apart, she must align herself with her enemy.
The character development can be contradictory. Alosa, is an assassin who can kill without hesitation. She also has a code of honor where she lets people live if she respects them or they've shown her kindness. Sometimes she's noble, other times base. The background story reveals that her father has tortured and trained her to be a ruthless pirate. She has more strength than several men combined and she fears her father. The complexity of this trait is not really captured in an authentic way making her lacking depth and superficial. She'd be tough, manipulative, seductive, and hard-core sometimes and soft, sentimental, naive, and educated other times. I would have liked more internal struggles and less romance. The unreliable narrator works against the plot because her actions are implausible and her edginess came and went like the tide. Plus, if she was so superior to others, why wait to break out from under her tyrannical father? The motivation given is money related, but she has her own ship and crew. Seems like she's already come into her own; hence, the premise seems weak.
The romantic subplot dominates the pirate plot and works against it with quite a bit of sexual banter between Alosa and Riden with characters mainly being motivated by love. Romantic novels are often interpreted as either showing women challenging societal norms or upholding them in a patriarchal society (Linda J. Lee, "Guilty Pleasures: Reading Romance Novels as Reworked Fairy Tales"). Common tropes are sexual desires, danger, violence, gender dominance, to name a few. Romance stories in the 70s and 80s by authors such as Kathleen Woodiwiss used captivity and rape motifs in a historical setting. I thought perhaps the author was trying to mock these motifs because the protagonist, is never afraid in captivity of being raped even though the threat is there. She lets herself become a captive and she knows that a man can't rape her. She is so sure of her power over men and claims to always be in control of them (which gives away the unreliable narrator) that the danger is not imminent. Later, when she is dominated by men, it is her love interest that frees her. While the protagonist seems strong and independent she is ultimately saved by men supporting the romance that Lee describes; the plot that upholds societal norms rather than challenges them.
Lee points out that the 90s romance novel shifted where women enjoyed their sexuality and were more equal with men versus the traditionally timid women conquered by a domineering man. Alosa represents the modern heroine who knows how to manipulate mens' desires but can't manipulate her father and is afraid of him. Alosa has her own ship, she's more powerful than the men around her, but she is always seeking her father's approval. She plans to be the pirate queen and the current mission of finding the treasure will help her do this; however, she seems to lose that focus near the end. I thought she needed more internal dialogue on her goal of being free from her father which gets lost in the romantic subplot. The end made it seem like she'd forgotten that goal and instead, she is dominated by fear of what her father will do to her if she doesn't accomplish the task at hand and saving her love interest.
The romance subverts the message of Alosa looking for power over a social system that denies women to be female pirates. She has her own female ship and crew; yet, is under her father's rule. The romance seems to confine the ability to hash out this theme and the overarching message blurs. I would have liked more backstory. Sometimes first person point of view makes the readers view too narrow and mucks up the protagonist's motives. The story shows a woman who appears to be fighting the status quo to be her own person, but succumbing to her father. She wants to challenge the existing social structure but doesn't succeed. Her plan of what to do with the treasure of money is not worked enough into the plot to show where the story her ambition. Instead, she has fallen in love and seems more interested in Riden than freedom.
Many romance novels hearken not only to Victorian authors, Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronte, but to the more ancient fairy tale genre. I wondered if the author was going to go that route with her plot and she does not work in those motifs in any depth. The abrupt ending left me wanting more and there is definitely a sequel for readers. Maybe the next book will show more character and plot development. This story just came up short for me.
2 Smileys
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