I was excited for this book. I mean, pirates! seafaring adventure! what could go wrong?
Unfortunately, this. For a book that promises such excitement it was…. boring. Noa is supposed to be 13, but he reads much younger. The writing style is just clipped enough to bleed all the tension out and it feels like the reader is being talked down to. I couldn’t bring myself to read more than a third. I just don’t care. At all.
Actually no I skimmed a few more chapters and the action scenes are abrupt and sometimes strange and I still don’t care.
The King’s mysterious decree not to leave the island, then his insistence that Noa take the map and follow it to its end was an abrupt about-face.
Also. That the pirates and rival king just happened to have the equivalent to ‘seafaring for dummies’ on the cabin shelf — conveniently, as none of the boys knew how to sail — pushed suspension of belief rather too far.
Also there are way too many boys and way too few girls in this story. Are we expected to believe that the children of the island are almost entirely boys? Because that’s just weird.
Thanks to NetGalley and Jolly Fish Press for providing an e-arc for review.
Whimsical Dragonette 