Hello everyone!
This is one of them!
It's the third in the batch of books I nabbed off BookSirens that one time, and I have to say that it was incredibly enjoyable, just as the first two.
But then I mean, pirates, right?
Nothing beats pirates in the middle of summer!
Especially when paired up with vampires for some reason or another ... that kind of thing sounds completely absurd when you think about it, but when you actually want to read it, you find it works out, somehow.
I don't know how, but it does. Marilyn Barr's Walk the Plank is up next, and hopefully you enjoy it.
I'm fairly sure I have some pirate-related books somewhere on the blog, so I'll be listing those I can find at the bottom of the page, as per usual.
Walk the Plank is the first of a trilogy of books that cover the (mis)adventures of a pirate named Branko and a vampire named Magda.
How do these two even get together, you ask?
Read on.
Branko serves about Queen Anne's Revenge with Blackbeard, the most fearsome pirate who ever sailed the Seven Seas; that is, until he's sold back into the slavery he was initially rescued from by said pirate, when he needs more mercury treatments.
Not one to allow this, Branko takes off and escapes, using his ability to jump high and balance on impossibly narrow passageways, and he decides to commandeer a small ship to disappear to Nassau with.
Only, he picks the one with a vampire.
See, Magda was promised to her wealthy husband in her colony as a child, and was supposed to die rather early as the mortality rates for female vampires are high. She didn't, and was then caught in an abusive marriage while still trying to please her husband, who eventually faked her death and sold her to scientists who want to dissect her while still alive.
This doesn't happen as Branko rescues her (completely by accident) and the two of them disappear onto the mainland, there to realize they could form a partnership as Branko is much less likely to be found out if he pretends to be a servant for a wealthy woman (read: Magda, who saves him from bounty hunters by pretending that).
Thus they team up, though he doesn't initially believe her when she says she's a vampire, not even when the early morning sun turns her skin into a bursting, boiling mess the first time around.
But after people label Magda a monster (while obviously being monsters themselves for allowing a little girl out after dark anyway) the pair hightail it through the swamp, and Branko is FORCED to believe Magda when he watches her nearly burst into flames, and ends up dunking her under mud to ensure she survives.
On the road to the other town where they might have better luck, they run into a group of pirates from the Revenge who'd been marooned when Blackbeard ran the ship aground and went onto another of his fleet, so they all decide to hightail it around together, especially after Magda demonstrates she is, in fact, a vampire, and drinks from one of them.
Their plan now is to get a bigger ship they can all sail together, but are interrupted by a man named William Mace, a nasty individual who seems to be the Caribbean's Jack the Ripper, and who everyone fears - right up until the point Magda kills and drains him.
The group - plus the innkeeper they stayed with - returns to the original scene of the crime and have Magda pretend to be a demon returning to hell from the top of the church so they can escape in the confusion, and she does so brilliantly: by setting the entire church on fire, mind.
Branko, in the meantime, has decided that he, and only he, will be the man for her, so once aboard the ship and sailing, he asks her to marry him, which she declines, saying she has to find herself first after the disaster of her first marriage - but he's not deterred, because she IS the woman for him, and HE is the man for her. So he'll just stick around to make sure she knows it!
And with that, they sail off into what they hope to be a better future.
The end!
A pirate and a vampire? As I said, sign me up!
Branko, the pirate and freed slave, and Magda, the vampire who's been sold to science, team up in this unlikely adventure during which Branko doesn't even believe Magda's a vampire at first (though how you don't get something's horribly wrong when someone's skin legitimately burns in front of your eyes too fast for it to be natural beats me), but eventually it all goes around what comes around, just as much as romance.
Because you KNOW there's bound to be romance!
But between dodging authorities, scientists, and ending up in a rag-tag team of former pirates from the Queen Anne's Revenge after Blackbeard ditches them (oh yeah, cameo from the head honcho himself here), our unlikely heroes figure out they're each other's ride-or-die really.
So you're actually surprised when Magda turns Branko down, though it DOES make sense when you think about it, from her point of view.
Honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed it, though sometimes modern speech slipped through the editing clutches, and I'd have loved to know just what makes Branko so special, with his ability to literally bounce around like he's a bouncing ball, balancing high up and whatnot. I'm hopeful this gets explained in the next two books in the series, which I plan on picking up as soon as can be.
Branko, the pirate and freed slave, and Magda, the vampire who's been sold to science, team up in this unlikely adventure during which Branko doesn't even believe Magda's a vampire at first (though how you don't get something's horribly wrong when someone's skin legitimately burns in front of your eyes too fast for it to be natural beats me), but eventually it all goes around what comes around, just as much as romance.
Because you KNOW there's bound to be romance!
But between dodging authorities, scientists, and ending up in a rag-tag team of former pirates from the Queen Anne's Revenge after Blackbeard ditches them (oh yeah, cameo from the head honcho himself here), our unlikely heroes figure out they're each other's ride-or-die really.
So you're actually surprised when Magda turns Branko down, though it DOES make sense when you think about it, from her point of view.
Honestly, I thoroughly enjoyed it, though sometimes modern speech slipped through the editing clutches, and I'd have loved to know just what makes Branko so special, with his ability to literally bounce around like he's a bouncing ball, balancing high up and whatnot. I'm hopeful this gets explained in the next two books in the series, which I plan on picking up as soon as can be.
Another small note I'd like to make is that I feel the scene would have been set even better if Branko's speech patterns were actually used more often, as they are explained every once in a while, but as he seems to speak normally to the reader through the use of chosen words, that falls a little flat. It doesn't deter the story, but it might have been funnier that way!
Overall though, I enjoyed Magda and Branko's journey of self-discovery, how they work well as a team, and finding a chosen family that would do anything for them.
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!
Drink up, me hearties, yo ho!
xx
*image not mine
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