This is a very colorful and action-packed novel. If you like books on pirates and their adventures you will like it. I will tell you exactly what I liked and didn’t like about this novel:
What I liked:
a) Dialogs are written keeping in mind the social status of a character. Sam is actually my favorite character. His dialog is almost always filled with some or other type of crude humor, which is actually what makes his character so fascinating to me. Likewise, the timid John’s sense of loyalty to his captain touched the core of my heart. Edward is a lot like me: I am generally a pacifist but I won’t hesitate to fight back if someone threatens to snatch away my Freedom.
b) Lots of great one-liners are there (such as “We’re sailors, not sissies”, “Have you puzzled out how to leave?”)
c) The characters are so well defined that they come to life the instant they appear on the pages of the ebook. None of them looked like caricatures or flat characters to me
d) The story is filled with a lot of action right from the start (this is what I liked the most about this novel). The style reminded me a lot of Joseph Conrad’s books, the only difference being that this novel is much more interesting to read as it doesn’t contain any boring or unnecessary fluff
e) The battle scenes are well-executed
f) I found the atmosphere of the book to be kinda peculiar at times, emanating a sense that the ship Edward purchased must be a cursed one (almost everybody assumes that it is a pirate ship and attacks Edward and his crew with little or no warning; of course Edward didn’t know it was indeed a pirate ship when he bought it)
What I didn’t like:
a) The excess of descriptive imagery can at times prove to be daunting to the reader (at least they did to me)
b) I wish the author would not take the shortcut of ‘magic/fantasy’ toward the end after building such a great and plausible ‘pirate adventure’ atmosphere. In short the ending lacked even any kind of remote plausibility; it made me wonder if it was the same ebook I had started reading. But whatever floats the author’s ‘ship’ I guess (pun intended). If he had stuck to the original atmosphere I would have enjoyed the novel even more.
Overall this is a decent page-turner but the ending keeps it from being a true masterpiece. I would still suggest that you check it out and judge it for yourself, as everybody has got different ways of looking at the same thing. It is otherwise a very good novel and who knows, you might actually like the surprise ‘genre-switch’ at the end. I hope the author publishes a sequel to this soon; I can’t wait to find out what became of Edward.