Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer
Oct. 1st, 2011 11:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lightreadsHey, I just found a dW bug. If there are "'s in your alt tag, the whole damn entry breaks. *pokes the appropriate people*
Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy by L.A. Meyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
It’s your typical ‘girl dresses as a boy, goes to sea, stuff happens’ book. I think I’m missing the age of sail gene; it just doesn’t do much for me. (Which is funny, ‘cause when you transplant age of sail into the stars and call it space opera, I’m all over that.)
Anyway, one thing. I don’t really get what’s going on with this book. It’s this raggedly cheerful narration with an appropriately naive heroine, but hanging over the whole thing like an axe is the threat of rape. It’s intensely present in the text the entire time, but the heroine only notices when there’s an actual violent sexual assault. Seriously, there’s a lot of deliberate dramatic irony where the reader understands the threat but Jacky doesn’t. And I just don’t get it. Is it there for older readers to get, like putting grown up jokes in Disney movies? Is it supposed to be . . . funny to younger kids? Don’t sugarcoat historical fiction, fine, I’m good with that. I just don’t get this – either what it’s actually doing or what it’s meant to, in the context of being for pretty young young adults.
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Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy by L.A. MeyerMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
It’s your typical ‘girl dresses as a boy, goes to sea, stuff happens’ book. I think I’m missing the age of sail gene; it just doesn’t do much for me. (Which is funny, ‘cause when you transplant age of sail into the stars and call it space opera, I’m all over that.)
Anyway, one thing. I don’t really get what’s going on with this book. It’s this raggedly cheerful narration with an appropriately naive heroine, but hanging over the whole thing like an axe is the threat of rape. It’s intensely present in the text the entire time, but the heroine only notices when there’s an actual violent sexual assault. Seriously, there’s a lot of deliberate dramatic irony where the reader understands the threat but Jacky doesn’t. And I just don’t get it. Is it there for older readers to get, like putting grown up jokes in Disney movies? Is it supposed to be . . . funny to younger kids? Don’t sugarcoat historical fiction, fine, I’m good with that. I just don’t get this – either what it’s actually doing or what it’s meant to, in the context of being for pretty young young adults.
View all my reviews