Under the Jolly Roger

Well, this book was...interesting. I started the Bloody Jack series a few weeks ago by listening to the first book on audio. I, of course, loved it. I liked how it seemed to be something that was missing from the normal stuff in YA that we are seeming to get these days in the YA Genre. It featured a female character who not only was fun and exciting but who also managed to like dresses, and could actually like a boy without making the romance feeling contrived. Add to that the sailing on a ship, which is something that I haven't seen in years, and you have a recipe for an awesome start to a new series.

Then I saw that the 2nd book was available as an ebook, and I decided that I was ready for another adventure with Jaky. However, here is where I think that I began to notice some things that other people are just now starting to notice: primarily, the idea that Jackey rarely faces any kind of appropriate consequences for her actions, and that the villain was seriously lacking. Despite this, I had hoped that the next book was going to be a return form. I hoped that it would return to its strengths and and show the reader a good time while giving Jacky some much needed development and maturity. Were my expectations met? Well...most of them.

There were some things that I liked about this book. One being the return to form. Meyer does put Jacky back on a ship for most of the novel. This being her ideal element, she, and the author, feel right at home talking about the day to day ship life aboard the high seas, chasing down smugglers coming in from France. There is also a good villain in this novel. Captain Scroggs is sufficiently scary and always a foreboding presence on the ship, making the surn of every page, or new part in the audio book open to the possibility of his appearance and the doom that is sure to follow in his wake.

But, sadly, what goes up must come down, and it seems that for every good thing that I liked, there was a negative aspect to counteract it. One would be that Scroggs is written off halfway through the book. Obviously, I won't say what happens to him for spoilers sake, but never the less, it is a little disappointing to see the main arch villain of the novel dealt with by the 50% mark. This, leads, through various circumstances, to Jacky being the Captain of the ship in everything but name alone, because of course it does.

This leads me to another element of the book, Jacky herself. Not only is she still childish and makes foolish decisions, but everyone seems to go along with it. In the book, there are several pirates who want to rape her, but the rest are just innocent normal men who wish to protect Jacky. Jacky manages to evade her assaulters with a combination of luck (aka contrived writing) and quick wit. Now, I'm not saying that I want for her to be sexually assaulted, but if this book were any more realistic, the outcome would not be so rosy as the book makes it out to be. She also manages to get the finest meals, no matter how many months she has been at sea, and she manages to have many different, very contrived things happen that make me just shake my head in disbelief.

Then there is the repetitiveness of the novel. Once Jacky sees a ship, they chase it down, she goes abroad with little resistance, then the French ship captain sees her and swears at how she managed to take his ship. This manages to repeat for a shockingly long portion of the novel, almost as though the author was trying to fill time.

And that thought of filling some sort of page count makes sense, when you first consider that the first novel was at about 300 pages, and this one is at over 500. That is a 50% increase in plot that this book doesn't justify in having. While this book was kind of fun, I am starting to really see the cracks in the story. Even though the audiobook was excellently read, that didn't stop me from being annoyed and frustrated at the lack of development in Jacky, and the repetitiveness of the plot. I give this book a three out of five. I will continue this series, but it will be some time before I pick up the next book.