Image of Little Dragon

 

Piratica: Being the Daring Tale of a Singular Girl's Adventure Upon the High Seas

The Piratica series, Book 1

Dutton
Fiction, YA Fantasy/Humor
Themes: Alternate Earths, Girl Power, Pirates, Seafaring Tales, Stage
*****

Description

In a world roughly parallel to our own nineteenth century, sixteen-year-old girl Artemesia suddenly recovers from six years of amnesia while in an English school of deportment for young ladies. She remembers, with shocking suddenness, her mother Molly Faith, better known to the world as the pirate queen Piratica, who stole through trickery and never through bloodshed. Art also remembers the Golden Goliath, the fiercest pirate of the seven seas. It was in a battle with his ships that Molly died, the same battle that took her own memory. Determined to live up to her mother's reputation and escape the meaningless and shallow life laid out for her by her well-bred but disdainful father, Art escapes from boarding school and makes for the city of Lundon, where she finds Molly's old crew reduced to living advertisements for Pirate Coffee. They seem oddly reluctant to head back out to sea, and Art's memories may not quite be what they seem, but before long the clever, gutsy girl has claimed the title Piratica for herself and won the crew's loyalty as her mother had before her. The seas are not a friendly place for a pirate queen, even a pirate queen with a unique code of honor. The dreaded Golden Goliath, long since deceased, also had a daughter, just as much like him as Art is like Molly, and it won't be long before the pirate ladies meet, in conflict over a treasure map that may be more than the worthless piece of singed paper that it appears to be. Somewhere in the middle of this lies the mysterious Felix Phoenix, a man with peculiar luck and an unknown agenda who first crosses paths with Art as she flees the boarding school and somehow ends up on her ship, the Unfortunate Stranger, as a captive, guest, and observer all in one.

Review

Very few books start moving on the first page, to my recollection, at quite the pace Piratica does. The pace hardly lets up throughout the book, either, with a constantly turning plot that never resorts to cheap gimmicks or audience-insulting tricks. Every character has more to them than initially revealed, and it all ties together in a nice ending that leaves the story open for a sequel, but doesn't need one. The parallel universe Lee creates (the reason I call it Fantasy) has some intriguing variations from our history, such as "Free" England being a Republic after casting out its own monarchy some thirty years previous. Piratica was a very enjoyable book which I had great trouble putting down. I've read rumors that there is at least one sequel on the way; I await it eagerly.

 

Return to Top of Page

 

Piratica II: Return to Parrot Island

The Piratica series, Book 2

Dutton
Fiction, YA Fantasy
Themes: Alternate Earths, Girl Power, Pirates, Seafaring Tales, Stage
***

Description

Art Blastside, better known in story and song as Piratica, the Queen of the Seas, narrowly escaped the hangman's noose after taking to the seas as a pirate - albeit a pirate who never took a life or fired a cannon, stealing by trickery - in an adventure that ended with her facing down Little Goldie, evil daughter of the brutal pirate known as the Golden Goliath. Now married to Felix Phoenix, the mysterious painter who came to love her during their adventures, Art is a national hero of Free England, living a life of luxury in a stately mansion on vast grounds overlooking the seas she once ruled aboard the Unfortunate Stranger. She, and the rest of her actor-turned-pirate crew, have fortune and fame rained upon them by a fawning populace that has gone completely pirate-crazy, dressing up as flamboyant pirates and carrying parrots and monkeys about in the streets. Art has everything a girl could possibly want... and she has never been more miserable.
When the Admiralty offers her a chance to return to sea with her old crew as a privateer - a pirate in the employ of Free Britain, sent to harry the ships of France and Franco-Spain - she jumps at the chance. After all, she proved before that she was indeed the Queen of the Seas, pistol-proof and charmed, with the luck of sixteen devils, and her first love was and always will be the open waves. But Felix, ever-disapproving of even her nonviolent piracy, sees only disaster in the making; she was lucky before, but this is war, and Art's policy of never taking a life can only last so long in the face of openly hostile enemies. With her new marriage crumbling about her and her old confidence quickly shaken, Art nevertheless has no choice but to press on. Besides, there is an unwritten subtext to her recruitment. It was Art, after all, who discovered the legendary Treasured Isle and its prize, the maps to the buried plunder of nearly every pirate to ever sail the seven seas, and Free England could certainly use a bit of treasure to fuel its ongoing war with monarchist France. Art isn't the only one who dreams of returning to see what the tide washed in to that treacherous island. Her old nemesis, Little Goldie, also charmed her way free of the hangman's noose, and she hasn't forgotten who humiliated her and cost her her crew and her freedom. If there's one thing Goldie excels at, it's exacting revenge, no matter how far she has to go to get it.

Review

Yes, it's a bit of a drop in the ratings from the last book to this one. While Piratica ripped along at a fine clip, this sequel drifts and meanders more often than not, with more than one long and ultimately pointless sidetrack. The fun alternate universe Lee crafted for these stories became silly and occasionally tedious, as people act like absurd caricatures rather than living, breathing human beings. The same world that has alcohol- and caffiene-hating "teatotallers" so addicted to tea that they lick drops off the cobblestones in desperation shouldn't contain vicious sea battles and wanton death and destruction, as this one does. Lee also seemed to take too much pleasure in the illogical resurrection of characters. At some point, resurrections read less like a clever plot twist and more like an indifferent shrug of the shoulders by an author who couldn't come up with anything else to "surprise" me with at the time. Not only did this make the already crowded cast of names (usually attached to little more than a vague detail or personality quirk) even more crowded, but it made me less inclined to care when characters faced down "certain" death; I know there's at least one more book in this series, so everyone who was theoretically killed very, very dead, even in front of witnesses, will probably walk back onstage in future installments, as Lee considers death an entirely curable condition in Piratica's world. The parrot Plunquette, who contributed so much to the riddle of the Treasured Isle in the first book, returns again, but mostly to poo on people; Lee must have decided that this was the height of humor from the first book, and so most every bird in the book manages to splatter almost everyone and everything repeatedly. I didn't hate this book, but I definitely felt my attention wander more than it did in the first Piratica, and it was a much longer slog to the end, which wasn't so much an ending as a brief, unresolved pause before the next book. If I do read Piratica III, I'll wait for the paperback. Better yet, I'll just look for it a library, so I'm not out any money.

 

Return to Top of Page

The Silver Metal Lover

The S.I.L.V.E.R. series, Book 1

Tantor
Fiction, Romance/Sci-Fi
Themes: Classics, Cross-Genre, Diversity, Robots, Spiritual Themes, Stardom, Urban Tales
***

Description

Jane has lived her sixteen years under the shadows of her mother Demeta and her privilege. The world often overwhelms and confuses her, so she welcomes others who tell her what and how to think and shape her life for her, even if she never seems to be anyone's priority and isn't even sure she likes the circle of friends she runs with, many of whom are petty, selfish, and cruel in that way of the idle rich. Jane never stops to ask what she wants for herself... until she sees the silver man on the theater steps - no, not a man, but a new line of robot by preeminent manufacturer Electronic Metals. Unlike the clunky, more functional variety she's used to, many of which are little more than a box with a screen, Silver walks and talks like a human, and can even play instruments and sing, as well as perform any other task a human master might desire to make them happy. From the first time she sets eyes on Silver, Jane finds herself beset by feelings so strange and so big she doesn't even know what they are. Is it fear? Is it hate? Or - God and the heavens help her - is it love? And is she merely projecting when she sees similar emotions in his fox-bright mechanical eyes looking back at her?
She doesn't dare tell anyone what she feels, or thinks she feels. But she cannot shake the notion that, despite everything she knows about robots, there's something more to this one. Even if she is right, though, this is a love seemingly doomed before it starts. Because Silver, when all is said and done, is just property, a prototype exhibition piece far beyond even her generous allowance... and in a world where so little is left to humans alone, so few jobs for the seething masses beneath the ivory towers of the wealthy that haven't already been replaced, a robot that displays true creativity and perhaps even a soul - that is essentially indistinguishable from a person - may well be one step too far.

Review

First published in 1981, the futuristic Gilded Age of the The Silver Metal Lover feels strangely fresh and relevant in a time when "artificial intelligence" has damaged so many creative careers (though, unlike the robots in this book, AI has nothing like self-awareness or independent creativity); for all that the masses rallying against yet another threat to the meager livelihoods and niches left to living humans sometimes seem like fearful peasants, one can understand just why they're so desperate and feel so unheard by the wealthy and the tech firms that keep pushing more and more of them over the brink into inescapable poverty. Lee also envisions a future that is casually accepting of nonbinary individuals, though even in a society this tolerant, expressing amorous feelings for what most regard as a jumped-up appliance counts as a step over the line of propriety.
Early on, Jane comes across as sheltered and spoiled, immature and weak-willed, and that is exactly what she is. Raised by a mother who didn't really want an independent daughter with a mind of her own but some sort of living doll or status symbol - Demeta constantly undermines her independence and confidence, and treats motherhood as a task that can be done more efficiently without all that pesky sentiment or exhausting listening, even relying on prepared color and body type charts to arrange the "proper" hair style and nutrient levels to produce Jane's optimal look - and surrounded by "friends" who largely seem incapable of caring for other people, not even themselves in some cases, the deck is stacked against Jane in any way except wealth. She literally has grown up in a castle in the sky, a lofty skyscraper among the clouds over the city, and has a habit of feeling the pains and emotions of those around her, possibly because she has never really been allowed to have any feelings or even opinions of her own. When she sees the robot Silver, she doesn't even recognize the emotion she's struck with, reacting like a small child whose feelings are too big to process: she lashes out verbally and runs away, physically ill. Slowly, clumsily, she begins to parse those big feelings, and in the process begins to grow up and think on her own. It's not easy or simple for her, though, when she has had virtually no healthy, mature role models in her life. And even when she does name the thing she's feeling, how can she possibly hope that those feelings can be reciprocated by a machine? Silver, for his part, tells her this more than once... but he is kind and patient, and it eventually becomes apparent that, yes, there is something a little more to him than his makers envisioned (hardly a spoiler - I mean, can you really read the Description and not think that'll be a plot point?). He does some growing and changing and self-discovery, too, so the relationship eventually becomes less lopsided than it starts. Jane sacrifices a lot in the name of love... though much of what she gives up, she soon realizes had no true worth to her at all, as she starts seeing her life and her world with new eyes. The life she rebuilds on her own has the feel of a waking dream, something so beautiful and perfect that it cannot seem destined to last.
My feelings on the book wavered throughout. At first, the immature heroine was a little offputting, as were her companions, the friends and distant mother, who kept her so childish she couldn't even recognize her first brush with love. Once it dug into the complicated relationship between Jane and Silver, though, the story strengthened. Neither Jane nor Silver forget that he is technically a piece of hardware, yet both are somewhat aware from the start that their bond is atypical, and both are changed significantly. Both also are clear-eyed enough to see just why people, especially the ever-increasing numbers of the poor, view tech like Silver as a very real threat, though the truest danger to their bond comes from elsewhere. Some bits at the end finally knocked a half-star back off the rating, as it ventures into metaphysical territory and also starts seeming stretched out. Other than that, though, it held up much better than many of its contemporaries.

 

Return to Top of Page