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4.01 AVERAGE
4.01 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
hopeful
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
Enjoyed it more at the start. Found I wasn't as engaged as I got further through, especially near the end. Maybe more of a "me" issue than the book? Also, not keen on the presentation of black people.
adventurous
funny
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Lots of action and daring heroic deeds and swashbuckling, very readable. A surprisingly even handed view of Catholics for its day, less so with the portrayal of black characters.
Never read a pirate story before, at least i don't think i have. Apparently this one is based on reality, or at least a version of reality that makes pirates out to be wronged gentlemen-buccaneers trying to survive despite the cruelty of the ruling classes. In turn Sabantini presents the aristocratic class as spineless half-wit bullies that can't help but cock things up...i loved it!
Это просто книга-машина времени, которая переносит тебя в те беззаботные времена, когда волновало только, найдут ли моряки Испаньолы заветные сокровища и доберётся ли в итоге Айвенго к своей Ровене.
Ушло в копилочку классического приключенческого романа, который нужно советовать читать детям и подросткам.
Ушло в копилочку классического приключенческого романа, который нужно советовать читать детям и подросткам.
I loved this book! Pirates are awesome and I have to admit that this is the first time I have read a pirate novel. I had to read this for a film a literature class that I am taking. This was a great choice for this class. The adventures Blood goes on are full of action and the dialogue is amazing. The film adaption to this novel is an old black and white movie. The acting is pretty cheesy but it's great considering the year it was made. This novel makes me want to read more piarate adventure stories. It also makes me wonder what other books are out there that I've never heard of that I need to read.
adventurous
emotional
inspiring
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
This is a book about pirates, treasure, swordfights, betrayal, cannonballs, Caribbean islands, the roaring main, and ladies in fetching corsets.
The last thing you'd expect from such a book is for it to get tiresome and repetitive, to trudge through the same formulaic episodes again and again, to gloss over the kick-ass rapier duels in order to linger on the minutiae of colonial administration - and yet this is what happens.
Here's every chapter of this book, pretty much: Captain Blood is in a sticky situation. Nobody thinks he can get out of it alive. Captain Blood comes up with a plan just crazy enough to work. The plan works. Everyone talks about how amazing Captain Blood is.
This is great the first few times. But the protagonist's relentless suavity and brilliance starts to get old, and eventually becomes downright irritating. I mean, this guy can do no wrong. From his piercing blue eyes (described in numerous faintly erotic passages) to his impeccable fashion sense, from his unerring eye for strategy to his skills as a miracle healer, Peter Blood is perfect.
He can't lose a fight. Two seventy-gun Spanish warships? No problem, consider those puppies sunk. Invincible stone fortress? Flattened. Drunken pirate king with a cutlass? Dead in two sentences.
It starts to get ludicrous. Captain Blood is eloquent, handsome, and has a finely calibrated sense of honor. His enemies are unfailingly ugly, vicious, small-minded brutes. And then there's the love interest, Arabella, as boring as she is "slim, cool, and beautiful."
Captain Blood is a good read for putting in context why writers and readers turned increasingly over the course of the 20th century toward the flawed, fallible hero (or in some cases anti-hero). He or she is much more interesting. Captain Blood, vaulting from triumph to triumph despite the odds stacked against him, quickly grows dull.
That said, you can also see why this book has survived when most of its ilk are forgotten. Sabatini is a better-than-average writer in the adventure genre, though he expends most of his energy in long scenes of two men declaiming angrily at one another, or the aforementioned hot-and-bothered descriptions of Captain Blood. And it's a prototypical pirate adventure tale, employing every sturdy cliche - in fact, it's probably responsible for creating a lot of those cliches.
Suggested further reading would be Richard Hughes' [b: A High Wind in Jamaica|188458|A High Wind in Jamaica|Richard Hughes|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388190660s/188458.jpg|2166961], written about seven years later, which subverts every expectation of the pirate genre while still involving lots of bloodshed, subterfuge, and seafaring.
The last thing you'd expect from such a book is for it to get tiresome and repetitive, to trudge through the same formulaic episodes again and again, to gloss over the kick-ass rapier duels in order to linger on the minutiae of colonial administration - and yet this is what happens.
Here's every chapter of this book, pretty much: Captain Blood is in a sticky situation. Nobody thinks he can get out of it alive. Captain Blood comes up with a plan just crazy enough to work. The plan works. Everyone talks about how amazing Captain Blood is.
This is great the first few times. But the protagonist's relentless suavity and brilliance starts to get old, and eventually becomes downright irritating. I mean, this guy can do no wrong. From his piercing blue eyes (described in numerous faintly erotic passages) to his impeccable fashion sense, from his unerring eye for strategy to his skills as a miracle healer, Peter Blood is perfect.
He can't lose a fight. Two seventy-gun Spanish warships? No problem, consider those puppies sunk. Invincible stone fortress? Flattened. Drunken pirate king with a cutlass? Dead in two sentences.
It starts to get ludicrous. Captain Blood is eloquent, handsome, and has a finely calibrated sense of honor. His enemies are unfailingly ugly, vicious, small-minded brutes. And then there's the love interest, Arabella, as boring as she is "slim, cool, and beautiful."
Captain Blood is a good read for putting in context why writers and readers turned increasingly over the course of the 20th century toward the flawed, fallible hero (or in some cases anti-hero). He or she is much more interesting. Captain Blood, vaulting from triumph to triumph despite the odds stacked against him, quickly grows dull.
That said, you can also see why this book has survived when most of its ilk are forgotten. Sabatini is a better-than-average writer in the adventure genre, though he expends most of his energy in long scenes of two men declaiming angrily at one another, or the aforementioned hot-and-bothered descriptions of Captain Blood. And it's a prototypical pirate adventure tale, employing every sturdy cliche - in fact, it's probably responsible for creating a lot of those cliches.
Suggested further reading would be Richard Hughes' [b: A High Wind in Jamaica|188458|A High Wind in Jamaica|Richard Hughes|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1388190660s/188458.jpg|2166961], written about seven years later, which subverts every expectation of the pirate genre while still involving lots of bloodshed, subterfuge, and seafaring.