Pirates of Darksea book review

Pirates of Darksea by Catherine Doyle follows Max who's brother, Christopher, introduced him to the story of Captain Thorn O'Malley of the Stolen Sunrise two years ago. Now two years later Christopher, is stuck in hospital his latest treatment not working and getting sicker, and Max is offered the chance to visit Darksea and Captain O'Malley's ship, just without his brother.

I have read from Catherine Doyle's co-written teenage books before so was excited to read from her with a younger target audience and as a solo writer and she did not disappoint.

I was hooked from the prologue and could not put the book down desperate to know how everything would go for Max. I read it over two sittings in one day due to a prior commitment but if I had the chance it would have been all at once.

I loved nearly everything about the book, including the pirates, magic, adventure and characters. Max was an extremely likeable young boy who you couldn't help but root for and accompanied by Ruby they made a team that you supported and hoped who get out of every situation they ended up in. It was great to see how strong their friendship ended up during the story too.

The pirates and magic made a great addition to the overall theme and story, with characters who had a huge personality and you just wanted to learn more and more about and a world that's magic had constraints and couldn't just be used to fix everything. The adventure was great to read about and had me loving exploring Darksea.

The themes that were explored in this book were also really key and ones that I would say have a high importance. The ending was really well done, and I liked how Max and Captain O'Malley's final conversation went, I think it was definitely a lot better than just using magic to fix the issue.

Overall an easy 4.5 star read that I loved and makes me so interested in reading more of Catherine Doyle's work. Highly recommend.

Comments

The Quiet and The Loud book review

The Quiet and The Loud follows George who finds the life around her apart from when she is on the water in her kayak. Her best friend Tess is pregnant, her other friend Laz is protesting for the climate and her dad who she hasn’t seen in years is trying to get in touch to talk to her. Then she meets Calliope where things feel safe and quiet. This book is set in Australia during the wildfires in the summer of 2019, that were particularly bad across all parts of the country. This is a YA book but I would definitely suggest it’s for an older YA audience with many of the topics it tackles and discussions that are held throughout the story. My copy has content warnings in the front and I would recommend reading those before picking up these include domestic violence, emotional abuse, anxiety, addiction, depression, PTSD, complex PTSD and catastrophic fires. Throughout the course of the book we follow George’s perspective in the current time period, as well as flashbacks to the p...

Guided book review

I have followed Emma on Bookstagram for a while now and kept meaning to pick up one of her books, Guided being the most recommended starting point. Guided follows Macey who is struggling after a girl in her Guide group died during a camp and as people are starting to ask questions about what really went down that night. This had a strong mystery throughout but felt like a good contemporary reflection of British teenagers and how guilt and grief can affect someone. We follow Macey’s perspective throughout the story, jumping between the past, the night of the event and the aftermath of the death in the present. There are a couple of diary entries too. Being in Macey’s head was a really interesting way to hear the story because you get to see how she is affected by everything going on around her and how over the course of the story her mental health and perspective changes. We see quite a wide cast of characters due to following multiple time periods. In the presen...

Carpe Jugulum book review

Carpe Jugulum is the final book in the Discworld Witches subseries and the last book with Witches characters I needed to read. We follow witches and vampires, and the chaos that comes with them interacting. Pratchett takes vampires and makes them modern, flipping everything everyone knows about them all on its head meaning no one actually knows how to deal with them. In Carpe Jugulum we follow the three we have come to know well Margrat, Nanny Ogg and Granny Weatherwax but since Margrat is off Queening we also follow Agnes who has taken over Margrat’s cottage. Along with the witches we obviously see a lot of our key ‘vampyre’ family but also the Priest Mightly Oats and we are introduced to the Pictsies we love drinking, fighting and stealing cows. I love Pratchett’s Witches and I think I always will but I also enjoyed meeting some fantastic new characters like Igor and seeing some I know from other books like The Nac Mac Feegles. What I like about our Witches books is...

Eilidh Reads

Search This Blog