Daughter of the Pirate King is the first novel in new series and is also the first book written by Tricia Levenseller. The second book Daughter of the Siren Queen
is due to come out in February 2018.
Please note that this review contains spoilers.
This book is about Alosa, the only child Pirate King has ever admitted being his. Even more – he trained and raised his daughter himself, paying careful attention to all the skills necessary to lead a pirate life and at some point become the Pirate Queen.
In this book, we follow Alosa on a very special mission her father has given her and the girl is not planning to disappoint him.
This book is a quick read, it is more suitable for middle-grade reading, I think. It does not delve into detail, which annoyed me a great deal. I am usually up for short descriptions because the longer those are, the more boring it becomes… usually. However, this time it annoyed me. The reason being that when Alosa was doing something incredibly stupid (like searching lower rate pirates instead of the first mate), I was annoyed, because obviously, if her pattern or thought was to search from top to bottom, why do lower rate before the first mate?
Well, that would be fine (read: I could accept that she’s not as smart as she thinks she is) if it wouldn’t be that 20 pages later we are told that actually before Alosa did that stupid thing, she already considered and tried to get into first mate’s quarters and it didn’t work out. It felt like such an unprofessional writing – not telling the reader important bits of the story and then mentioning them later. Really? This pattern occurred a couple of times, not just once.
Moving on to the characters, Alosa was incredibly full of herself. I understand that she has gone through an extensive training programme and has suffered a lot to have the skills and confidence she has, but it was too much. She was a brat. What happened when suddenly she was in a situation she hadn’t planned? She sort of didn’t do anything at all, except being sad and angry and throwing threats around. All that bravado was for nothing.
The story at some points seemed like a rip off from Pirates of Carribean. I have never considered how many different storylines you can actually have with pirates, but the elements that kept popping up reminded me a lot of the popular franchise, which I wouldn’t mind if this book would be awesome. For example, some of the elements: sirens, secret map, something divided between the coolest pirates, an island full of treasures (possibly cursed), magic, two cool “enemy” pirates (I’m talking about those two funny guards of course) etc. I think that there is more to the pirate theme than this.
Nevertheless, I hope that the author is going to improve, after all, this was only the first book and there’s plenty of space to grow and develop her writing so I will keep up with the series.
This book received two stars from me on my Goodreads page and I think it is a pretty good read for children. There is some romance so I would say – 12-14-year-olds could enjoy it. And in general who doesn’t love pirates?
Have you read the book? Any thoughts? Do you have pirate book recommendations for me? Spill them all, I love a good pirate story and haven’t read much of them! Cheerio!
November 24, 2017 at 06:18
I love Pirates of the Caribbean but I am yet to read any books about pirates. This one had an interesting premise but I can see why it didn’t work out for you. I hope that your next pirate book will be better though. Great review 🙂
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November 30, 2017 at 20:15
I was mostly disappointed in this book myself. I agree with your assessment of the writing, I also felt the romance was as subtle and interesting as a truck.
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December 1, 2017 at 15:45
I love P.O.T.C. but I’m not sure if I need to read t as I’ve seen the movies…is there enough of a difference to be it’s own story? Would you recommend another adult read it?
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December 1, 2017 at 15:56
There’s enough difference in the stories to read it, but… Another adult who generally reads books – no, I would not recommend it. An adult who does not read many books – perhaps, it would be a quick and easy read that might keep him/her entertained.
I certainly like Pirates of Carribean more.
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December 1, 2017 at 16:02
I may read it to some children then, have you read any good adult pirate books? I tried writing one once but never read any…
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January 6, 2018 at 04:20
I liked Alosa a lot! I’ve read a lot of reviews about DOTPK, and it seems that it’s a polarizing one, either you love or hate Alosa.
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July 9, 2018 at 14:16
I’m not a huge Pirates of the Caribbean fan myself, but it’s disappointing to hear the writing was not there yet on this one. I’ve got some middle schoolers who might be willing to try it out but looks like it may not be for me. I really do enjoy the premise of this one, though!
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