Alex Preston

I was left strangely dissatisfied by this book. I found the writing to be fine, and the topic was clearly well researched, and worth reading about, but there's something about the whole that misses the mark.
The core of the book is the activities of a pirate gang operating in the Winchelsea area in the mid 1700s. The author gives enough information without becoming a history text.
But the vehicle for telling the story is the problem. The protagonist is a 16 year old woman. Unusual for a pirate gang, but not to be excluded. The pirate girl then becomes gay, and then trans, and then inter-sex. Again, not necessarily a problem, but the cumulative odds against this having a place in the historical era are starting to become a little fantastic. And then the pirate girl becomes a player with the Jacobites - spends time with the Bonnie Prince, and is at Culloden.
It's the Forest Gump problem - it's just too much for a single character too carry in a story.
So, good attempt, but not quite right for this reader.… (mehr)

1742 and the once prosperous town of Winchelsea is now just a haunt for smugglers. For orphan Goody Brown, her world is turned upside down when her adoptive father falls foul of the gang he works with and is mudered. Goody vows revenge and becomes a smuggler, a Jacobite and more.
Although this is a short book at times it feels interminably long and there are huge gaps in the narrative. It also feels as though several 'woke' elements are thrust together and lie uncomfortably in an already packed narrative. We have racism, slavery, lesbianism, transgender alongside violence and a strong historical element. The first part seems long yet Culloden and the rest gallops by - a solid enough book but not a memorable one.… (mehr)