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A review by erin0999
Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller
4.0
*3.5 stars*
This book was a pretty fun read. There were some things I had some problems with, but overall I enjoyed it! The first half was a little slow for me but once I hit the more interesting bits of the plot, I read most of it in one day.
One thing I think I didn’t like so much was I feel conflicted about Alosa’s character. I love a bad ass woman character who can fight and be a good leader with a good head on her shoulders, but there were times where I felt like she was more of a caricature of a strong character than a real one. Maybe this sounds cliche but I think to really see how strong a character is, we have to know their limits and that they can show weakness. I think sometimes that gets lost when writing a strong female character because we are taught that defeat and weakness are “feminine” things. Which is stupid. I don’t think the book does this on purpose obviously, but I wanted to see more weakness from Alosa, to know that she is a (mostly) human girl who suffers pain and misery and stress. I think seeing Alosa’s armor crack a little bit would’ve made me feel for her more and be more empathetic/ stressed out when she was undergoing physical and mental strain.
I also felt like the writing was mostly ok. There was a fair amount of info dump interspersed throughout and I thought sometimes situations and explanations were over explained to the point where I thought this might’ve been for a younger audience until words and insinuations were made that are definitely for an older audience than I thought. I think part of that comes with writing a debut novel, we all fall into that writing trap sometimes. Additionally, I will Alosa’s powers would have been revealed to the reader a little earlier in the novel so that when the “real” plot came in later in the book, the reader could’ve been more familiar with it. Although, I really like the method used in this book of showing the readers the extent and limits of a character’s powers by having them being experimented on for information and exploitation of the power. I thought that was really clever and worked well.
Overall, I had a good time reading this book and it really flew by once I hit the good bits of plot. There were some things I didn’t like but I still want to read the sequel because I believe there is a lot of potential for growth in both the writing and the characters, but I also really want to know what happens next in the adventure. I am a sucker for a pirate story.
My friend Clare recommended this book to me and I hope this review doesn’t sound too complain-y because I really did enjoy it and want to read book 2! Thanks Clare!
This book was a pretty fun read. There were some things I had some problems with, but overall I enjoyed it! The first half was a little slow for me but once I hit the more interesting bits of the plot, I read most of it in one day.
One thing I think I didn’t like so much was I feel conflicted about Alosa’s character. I love a bad ass woman character who can fight and be a good leader with a good head on her shoulders, but there were times where I felt like she was more of a caricature of a strong character than a real one. Maybe this sounds cliche but I think to really see how strong a character is, we have to know their limits and that they can show weakness. I think sometimes that gets lost when writing a strong female character because we are taught that defeat and weakness are “feminine” things. Which is stupid. I don’t think the book does this on purpose obviously, but I wanted to see more weakness from Alosa, to know that she is a (mostly) human girl who suffers pain and misery and stress. I think seeing Alosa’s armor crack a little bit would’ve made me feel for her more and be more empathetic/ stressed out when she was undergoing physical and mental strain.
I also felt like the writing was mostly ok. There was a fair amount of info dump interspersed throughout and I thought sometimes situations and explanations were over explained to the point where I thought this might’ve been for a younger audience until words and insinuations were made that are definitely for an older audience than I thought. I think part of that comes with writing a debut novel, we all fall into that writing trap sometimes. Additionally, I will Alosa’s powers would have been revealed to the reader a little earlier in the novel so that when the “real” plot came in later in the book, the reader could’ve been more familiar with it. Although, I really like the method used in this book of showing the readers the extent and limits of a character’s powers by having them being experimented on for information and exploitation of the power. I thought that was really clever and worked well.
Overall, I had a good time reading this book and it really flew by once I hit the good bits of plot. There were some things I didn’t like but I still want to read the sequel because I believe there is a lot of potential for growth in both the writing and the characters, but I also really want to know what happens next in the adventure. I am a sucker for a pirate story.
My friend Clare recommended this book to me and I hope this review doesn’t sound too complain-y because I really did enjoy it and want to read book 2! Thanks Clare!