http://bactra.org/weblog/algae-2009-04.html#massey ( )

The perfect combination of adventure, magic and romance. It's got a female lead that doesn't buckle under the slightest pressure or run to a man every time things get tough and it's well enough written to make it worth keeping on your shelves after the first read-through. Very nice. ( )

Ich fande das Buch eigentlich sehr gut. Ab und an war es stellenweise langweilig, aber es gab in der Geschichte auch ständig Wendungen. Sehr spannend. Hat Spaß gemacht, es zu lesen. ( )

Mad Kestrel, do I have to describe it with the usual cliches? It is: Adventure on the high seas! Swashbuckling action! There is even a touch of romance, albeit a very bad one...more on that later.

Mad Kestrel follows the adventures of a female pirate who possesses a magical ability she doesn't quite understand. When I think of women sailing on the high seas with a band of pirates, I am forced to admit that I picture the stereotypical "pirate bitch" that the fantasy genre has created. Tough, hard, masculine... She berates her men with her foul mouth, and they fear her more than they fear scurvy or sea monsters. Of course, these pirate bitches are always supposed to be jarring, "Oh my goodness, that's one tough chick" we're supposed to think...but of course, we've seen it countless times.

So, you can imagine how happy I was to see that Kestrel, the pirate lady of Misty Massey's debut novel, actually has some depth. Like the endless seas she pirates upon, she is full of surprises and interesting oddities. Don't get me wrong, she's still one tough lady! She worked twice as hard as any man to earn the respect of her crew mates, and she is described as having killed "countless men" in her pirating escapades! But, instead of being an annoying hard-ass, she has maintained many feminine qualities that make her actually seem human, instead of the cardboard cutouts you usually get with this kind of story.

Unfortunately, likable characters are only 1 component to a good book, and I found many other aspects of this one less than satisfactory.

One of the problems is the discrepancies between the narrator's descriptions of how the characters act and how they actually behave in the book. For example, Kestrel is a pirate, and at one point she is attacked in an alley by two men. They threaten to kill and/or rape her, and are clearly unsavory individuals even compared to a piratess. She escapes of course, knocking both men unconscious. As she is fleeing, in a hurry, she notes that one of the unconscious men is bleeding from the head, and she actually, briefly, wishes she had time to stop and bandage the poor sap up. This is the same lady who the narrator describes as killing "countless" men for no good reason except to steal their treasure. Why is she so concerned about a guy who just tried to kill her? Not very pirate-like. I liked that the characters weren't robotic, and that they were often faced with tough decisions, but it didn't coincide with what the narrator was telling us. The conflicting messages like this were frequent and annoying, but were mostly just a minor distraction.

What wasn't a minor distraction was the love-interest of Kestrel. She's an awesome character, I liked her. She was strong, smart, and intuitive. She made for a great heroine, and I definitely felt connected to her. Then she fell in love with an complete prick for no good reason other than the fact that she thought he was "pretty." For 200-ish pages, a certain character is the antagonist of the story. He's a cocky, arrogant asshole and he treats Kestrel like shit. She spends a good portion of the book cursing him and hunting him down, and I couldn't wait for her to run her sword through him! But no, when she finally catches him she decides instead of wanting to run him through with her sword, she wants him to run her though with his "sword." Most disappointing! It marred what was otherwise a perfectly enjoyable book. I liked the story, I liked the characters, some minor inconsistencies in the text but that was ok, I would easily give the first 200 pages of this book 4 or 5 stars. But Kestrel falling head over heels for the "dickhead" of the story spoiled the whole thing for me. A pity.

Despite the problems, I did still enjoy the book. The bad romance may have just been me. Maybe most readers would enjoy the antagonist's leering and jeering, I just can't spend 200 pages hating a character and be expected to flip so quickly and enjoy reading the heroine become hopelessly enthralled by such a piece of crap of a character. Oh well, it's still a quality pirate adventure, for the most part. Plus, it ends really well, so I'm being generous with my rating.

3 stars

Note: You may have noticed some potty mouth language in this review. Please know that I do not condone such behavior, but I felt it was necessary. It is, after all, a review for a book about pirates! ( )

Kestrel, the only woman on the ship Wolfshead, has hard won the grudging respect of her fellow pirates. But when her captain is arrested under mysterious circumstances, she's going to have to lead the crew to save her mentor, while continuing to hide her magic from the shadowy Danisoba.

I wasn't looking for much more than some light entertainment going into this: Pirates! Magic! Nefarious plots! Unfortunately, it didn't really seem like it was thought-out all that throughly and the disparate elements never really knit together into a compelling conflict. There were lots of character relationships we were told to invest in, without any evidence to back up supposed deep emotional connections- which does take the sting out of any loyalties or betrayals.

I also never really got a sense of how their world shaped up enough to care about the "politics" of the whole deal (and certainly for pirates, they participate in an astounding lack of pirating). Nor did I understand the purpose of the whole magic subplot which was very poorly integrated and ultimately seemed rather unnecessary, except to excuse the story from the real world. Overall, it all seemed like a uncommitted prequel- for a novel I probably not going to read. ( )