Very disappointing installment in the Mary Russell's saga. I'm not sure what Laurie King had in mind when thinking about writing this book. This is not a real pirate story as the action is scarce and the insights into pirate's life and their motives is even less consistent. Characters are barely sketched with no attempt to deepen their psychology, except for Pessoa the interpreter, who's supposed to be a real life person that nobody really heard about and has a largely redundant role in the whole story anyway. This mystery lacks the main page turner for such books: a good plot. Writing style is intricate and at times hard to follow, sometimes providing lots of detailed information on pointless issues - like for example the name of each and every sailing ship's gear and sails. By page 200 I had lost interest, and I had to force myself to reach the end of the book and its less than spectacular finish. Felt like something thrown together in a hurry with no real story outline and little preparation. This is probably one of the worst books I've ever read. Possibly it's time to consign Holmes and Russell to a well deserved retirement from mystery stories. low 3s -- excellent, excellent prose as always, but lots of technical problems.two-thirds of the book is sleepy detail we actually don't need much of to get us where we need to be by the third act, which is where all the action and import is. on top of this, the pretext for getting russell into the action is soooooo flimsy. then, to make matters worse, the whodunnit is solved in a single paragraph, stumbled upon by chance, with little lead-up or logic and almost zero ramifications. very unsatisfying, given what king's capable of. still, russell and holmes themselves are written gorgeously, and i suppose after the darkness and seriousness of the previous two books a light, silly caper was called for.i've seen way better, but fans of the series should still read it.
What do You think about Pirate King (2011)?
I found this be a very long winded and uninvolving detective story, which I struggled to finish.
—mohinbanker
utterly ridiculous and thoroughly enjoyable.
—tomas77
