Synopsis:
Morgane grew up at sea, daughter of the fierce pirate captain of the Vengeance, raised to follow in her footsteps as scourge of the Four Chains Trading Company. But when Anna-Marie is mortally wounded in battle, she confesses to Morgane that she is not her mother.
The captain of the enemy ship reveals he was paid to kill Anna-Marie and bring Morgane home to France and her real family. Desperate to learn the truth about her lineage, Morgane spares him, leaving the Vengeance and everything she knows behind.
Her quest reveals a world of decadence and darkness, in which monsters vie for control of royal courts and destinies of nations. She discovers the bloody secrets of the Four Chains Trading Company, and the truth about her real mother’s death, nearly twenty years before…
Review:
Hello again dear reader or listener, I am back with another Arc review, this time curtesy of the lovely folk at Solaris, aaaand it is an ambivalent one. So, with thanks to the publisher, here are some of my honest thoughts.
The best way to sum up my feelings for this book overall would be to say that I did enjoy what I read for the most part, but I was disappointed not to find what had been promised. Newman shows no lack of writing skills for sure, in fact what we do get reads really smoothly and I’ll get into all the good stuff properly in a moment. But I’m not sure I’d confidently say she hit the mark on the target she set out either. The Vengeance is being promoted as a swashbuckling pirate adventure set in a version of Alexandre Dumas’s world haunted by vampires. And yet there is a surprising lack of the paranormal and not quite as much pirating or swashbuckling as implied. Without spoiling it, I feel the need to warn you that the paranormal bits we do get are a whiff of one thing around the 70% mark and a quick vampiric presence in the last 15% ish of the story, not counting the epilogue.
Pacing was another odd one here in that the writing kept me engaged, I was following along swimmingly and eager to see what would happen next, but it felt both rushed and not at times? What I mean is, I got to the end of what narratively felt like the first of say three acts, and I looked to my progress bar to see I was 65% in? And yet it had felt as if the story was barely getting started! Which isn’t even to say that nothing happens. A lot does but it all feels as build up and scene setting? I can see how this book would work as the opening act or even the prologue of a series and yet it presents as a self-contained story leaving no actual narrative loose ends. Still somehow, we get 20 chapters worth of said build-up, only for everything to be resolved in the next two and a half, barely giving the reader the time to even register the aforementioned vampires or be really impacted by the villain in any significant way, and then an epilogue which was lovely (don’t get me wrong) but still felt like I barely had time for any of the final act to sink in. This book could’ve easily been at least a hundred pages longer, hell, it might’ve benefitted from it, allowing the author to enrich some of the more diluted or rushed moments of this story.
I don’t mean to be harsh here though, because as I said, I did enjoy what I read. The characters are interesting, some of the backgrounds provided very intriguing and definitely something I’d like to see explored more in future books. Morgane’s arc of being a fish out of water, almost quite literally hah, was entertaining as much as it was a good device to showcase all the inconsistencies or hypocrisies of polite society in France of the 1660s, and mainly of the vampiric oppression that is hinted at later in the story. The characters that act as foils against her were also well developed, especially the young governess Lisette, and I’d argue their relationship was the only thing that was truly allowed to progress and develop at a steady and more natural pace throughout the story. It made for wholesome moments of respite in between the chaos chasing Morgane from the moment she sets foot on French soil, and complemented her brash pirate personality very nicely. My only peeve with her was her obtuse naiveté to reach a certain goal when everyone she meets and their mother tell her it’s not worth it, based on first hand experience. But I don’t begrudge that actually because it makes for a more complex character trying to hold onto what she tells herself to make things make sense. It doesn’t mater that the reader knows it will not work out from the very beginning, because we get to follow along with a young woman who thinks she knows how the world works and realizes she’s still got a lot of growing to do.
Also, I know I said that we don’t get nearly enough pirating and swashbuckling but what we do get is really good and well researched/rendered. Which is probably why I was disappointed not to see enough of it, when the author clearly has the ability to put it on the page vividly and atmospherically. Newman doesn’t give a sanitized version of what piracy looked like and it just gives the reader a more nuanced and vivid picture. I wanted more of the crew and definitely more of the ship life antics that can translate to life on land the way you see in Pirates of the Caribbean for example. This book works well enough as a historical fantasy but it deserved to be allowed to breathe and lean into the paranormal aspects and ambiance more.
A quick glance around other reviews showed me that overall, this seems to be a bit of the consensus around this book and I felt a little relieved cause I initially feared it was just being me being persnickety. Newman has a really solid boned story and, had it been allowed to flourish better, it could’ve been an excellent new entry in the swashbuckling subgenre but, as it is, it is one to be embarked on with tempered expectations.
Until next time,
Eleni A.E.
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