Showing posts with label The devil and the deep blue sea. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The devil and the deep blue sea. Show all posts

Wednesday 7 June 2017

The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea by Johanna Craven

This writer is enjoying a few days holidays. With some excellent beach weather, it means that I'm reading a lot. What after all is better than getting a golden tan while enjoying a good book. This one went particularly well with waves lapping away gently in the back ground. A great story with good character development. 5 stars.




I enjoyed this book immensely; it had everything a good seafaring yarn should have. A captain haunted by the past and teetering on the brink of insanity. A plucky heroine in the shape of French stowaway Catherine. Hiding below decks was  another female, a crew member, pretending to be a boy. Our anti-hero Harry; who went seeking adventure but got rather more than he bargained for. Add to this a rebellious crew and you have a powder keg of a pirate ship and all the elements of a gripping story. Captain Archer is a great character and we get inside of his whisky fuelled mind. He is temperamental and unpredictable and he took his ship and us the reader in some unexpected directions. The story is set against the back drop of a period where privateers no longer had the backing of king and count and some, like our captain, turned to piracy. Also the events that took place in Port Royal, Jamaica, in 1692. I Love reading historical novels and doing some further reading on Wikipedia to get more factual information. I couldn’t fault the writer on her research and the way she brought this particular time in history to life. But even if history leaves you cold, this is a riveting adventure story first and foremost.