Bloody Jack

Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer is about a girl who dresses as a boy to join His Majesty's Navy to take down pirates. Coming off of the streets with nothing but the clothes she took from a dead friend, she starts her new life as a Sailor Boy who assists those who are actually in the Navy. She can't let her secret of actually being a girl get out, otherwise who knows where they will drop her off and leave her. She has dreams of being a sailor and seeing far off places and going on adventures, so she hides herself in plain sight as a small boy on a big ship.

This was okay though I was hoping for more. There are a whole bunch of books in this series full of all kinds of adventures so I'm assuming it gets better. It starts out with her turning maybe 12 (faking 10 year old boy) and supposedly two or three years passes. It didn't feel like that too me. There was no mention of time until almost the end of the story and the rest of it felt glossed over. It was written in a past tense, which is normal, but as if written by someone much older while at the same time the accent that is used in the writing shows that it should be more present tense or at least closer to the actual time it occurred. I guess what I'm saying is that the narration is very distant from what is going on in the story.

At the times of high intensity, fighting the pirates and whatnot, I was never scared for her--this possibly had to do with the narration style, maybe something else which I can't put my finger on.

Half way through the novel, when one of the boys finds out that she is a girl, the story turns to them necking the whole time. Every moment they could get they held hands or kissed or touched each other or something. I felt like I might as well have put them in a hallway of a high school or something. That was all it was about for the longest time and I got bored. It was a good thing she got in fights with her other crewmen and pirates, otherwise I would have put it down.

I did enjoy the some of "Jacky's" quirks and the fact that she doesn't see herself as brave. She becomes Blood Jack because she kills a pirate to save a friend. She survives being on an island on her own for a while. I even liked the reality of when she is finally discovered that these gentlemen sailors treat her like a girl of privilege even though she was a beggar off the street at the beginning. Of course to keep her "safe" they put her in the brig (as there is really no other place they could put her, so they say) and have guards on her 24/7, which is excessive in my opinion. If there was a lady that they had saved from pirates, they wouldn't have put her in the brig. So why Jacky? The whole ending was weird. And the awkwardness of suddenly realizing she is female was never really mentioned. Sure they treat her different, but none of them mention any awkwardness or weird looks. I'm sure that would have happened.

The setting was kept simple but we were given enough information to make a guess as to what was going on. Though I kind of wish there had been a tad more where we could have learned more about ships.

Aside from Jaimy and Jacky, most of the characters were kind of flat to me. We weren't give backstories to many of the others. Super brief glimpses maybe, but not enough to give them more than a stereotype.

I think the story has a lot of potential, but right now I'm kind of disappointed. I'll read the next one, but if it doesn't pick things up greatly, I won't read more of the series than that.