Daughter of the Pirate King: 3 stars
Daughter of the Siren Queen: 4 stars
Alosa is a famous pirate captain in her own right, leading a crew of almost exclusively women. She also happens to be the only daughter of the Pirate King, who rules the seas with cruelty and intimidation tactics. Her father has one piece of a legendary treasure map, which will reveal the location of untold riches to the one who can locate and unite the missing pieces. Alosa needs to get herself taken prisoner by a rival pirate crew, so she can sneak around the ship at night and try to locate the missing piece for her father.
Draxen, the pirate captain, and most of his crew are generally dismissive of Alosa, she’s only a woman after all. Only Riden, the captain’s younger brother and first mate, refuses to let his guard down around Alosa. He observes her closely and suspects that she’s hiding things (he’s not wrong), but none of the rest of the crew seem to heed his warnings.
In Daughter of the Siren Queen, Alosa has succeeded in her mission, and her father, the Pirate King, seems pleased with her for a change. She’s located and united the three pieces of the legendary treasure map, and defeated not only Draxen, the pirate who held her prisoner in the first part of her quest, but Vordan, another rival pirate captain who held Alosa and Riden prisoner and tortured both of them. Riden is fully aware of Alosa’s siren abilities now (I would spoiler warn, but the title of the book is a pretty big clue as to the identity of her maternal parent), which seem to frighten him, yet he seems determined to serve her loyally as part of her crew. The handsome young pirate is proving both a help and a distraction. When Alosa seems in danger of being overwhelmed by her siren powers, merely a word or a touch from Riden can bring her back to herself.
While unable to lie, because he was enthralled by Alosa’s siren powers, Vordan revealed certain facts about Alosa’s father. Taking Riden and a few trusted crew mates to snoop around the Pirate King’s quarters, she discovers that not only was Vordan right about her father hiding something that gave him an advantage against other pirates, but it’s also a much bigger secret than Alosa ever expected and she won’t be able to lie to herself about her father and his lifelong abuse of her, which according to him was only to make her the strongest and most fierce she could be. Alosa can no longer allow her father to be the first to reach the fabled treasure and sets off to beat him there, even if it might endanger her own life and that of her crew.
Daughter of the Pirate King is Tricia Levenseller’s debut novel, and it reads a bit like it. None of the characters feel that well developed and while there is promising world-building and some good chemistry between Alosa and Riden, Alosa is quite an unpleasant character early on, and clearly still very much conditioned by the harsh upbringing she’s had at her father’s hands. I was surprised at how dark some of the plot went for a YA novel, but it also made the story more entertaining.
Daughter of the Siren Queen is a much stronger book and where Alosa really comes into her own as a character. After spending a lot of her life either trying to deny or fight not to be overpowered by her half-siren side, she learns to control it while working closely with Riden (because this is a YA novel and the young woman hasn’t really known much love or affection from anyone) it obviously takes her WAY too long to figure out why he’s the only person who seems to keep her connected with her human side. Some of the siren stuff Alosa can do is very cool and that aspect of the world-building I really enjoyed.
Alosa’s pirate crew isn’t really a major part of the first book, since she spends a lot of time onboard Draxen’s ship, trying to find the piece of the treasure map. Her crew of swashbuckling women, the few men who are also accepted on the ship, not to mention the surprisingly non-annoying child onboard, were all fun characters and I gather that there’s a third book recently published, set in this world, focusing on two of the other crew members. I’m probably not going to rearrange my TBR to read it any time soon but will be open to buying it if I see it in an e-book sale in the future.
Judging the books by their covers: The new covers for this series are SO much prettier than these (look them up), which are cartoony and rather simplistic and I'm really not excited about them. At least I only own the books in e-book format, so I don't actually see the covers very often.
Crossposted on Cannonball Read
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