A review by mxmaggie__
Pirate Queen: The Legend of Grace O'Malley by Tony Lee

2.0

While this book is inspired by real events and real people, it choose to take quite a few liberties with history, and didn't even have great storytelling as a pay off for its revisions. The number one flaw with this story was it's desire to cover far too much time, in far too few pages. They wanted to take us from Grace's childhood to her elder years, which never gave us the chance to connect with any characters or story lines. Her husband was killed by the British? I guess that's a bummer, but I only had about 8 panels to get to know him. Her new lover, was also killed by the British? Well I literally just met him, so... I intellectually understand that's bad. Her one son sold out her other son which led the second son's murder, and now she's forgiving her first son, who I've never seen before? Sure, why not. Further this book ran wild with the truth --Queen Elizabeth and Mary Queen of Scots are sisters?-- but since Grace O'Malley is not a historical figure I'm familiar with I had no ability to pull fact from fiction. And I don't think young readers would be able to either.