What do You think about Voyage Of Slaves (2006)?
I wish I had more positive things to say about this book.I've been a long-time fan of Jacques' Redwall series, so I picked this book up without realizing it was the third of a series. It does explain what happened previously to the characters, so I did not feel out of the loop. However, the writing was very weak.The main issue was the characters. Jacques creates colourful characters who are fun and interesting, and he excels at writing witty, lighthearted dialogue. Unfortunately, aside from that, his characterization was weak. The characters are fairly one-dimensional, and a lot of them tend to sound so similar that their dialogue is nearly interchangeable.Things come a bit too easily to Ben and Ned at times. Most of their plans go off without a hitch. They make friends quickly and easily, and are always rewarded with free meals, lodging, and even money. The fact that they see the ghosts of the Flying Ditchman ship whenever danger is near is also ridiculously convenient. Hearing about how "mysterious" Ben and his grey eyes were all the time was quite repetitive.I also need to complain about the love interest, Seaphina. The book won't shut up about the "black-skinned beauty" and how much Ben loves her, and it is painful. She has little to no personality, and I thus found her the least interesting member of the Rizzoli troupe. At the end of the book, I just could not care about her or what happened to her.A minor nitpick is Jacques' portrayal of animals in terms of intelligence is widely inconsistent. Ned the dog is witty, smart, perceptive, and he might as well be human. Dogs and cats in this novel both seem pretty intelligent, yet horses and sakes seem like just ordinary, animals who can't communicate.Lastly, the punctuation was abysmal. Whoever edited this does not know how commas or semicolons work, and it was frustrating.Overall, I was incredibly disappointed by this book. I preferred the parts where Ben and Ned were separated from the Rizzoli troupe and meeting all of these fun characters, but even then so much time was spent with Ben and Seraphina angsting over missing one another. I would highly recommend Hacques' Redwall series as opposed to this - it was not worth the time.
—Anandatic
I've always loved Brian Jacques' storytelling skills, but I kind of hate how formulaic his stories are (see the Redwall series). The man literally never deviates from his "good-is-good and evil-is-evil" characterizations, and it'd be infinitely more interesting if he was willing to blur the line a lot more. But I digress. While the first two books of this series were very imaginative (it's fun to see him tackle human characters for a change and explore Ben and Ned's 'immortal damnation;), the fact that the two protagonists are "practically perfect in every way" really irritated me. Oh, and the countless reference to Ben's "mysterious, clouded, unfathomable grey-blue eyes"? They never go away. I had a checklist with me this time and I managed to get around 11 references. So just in case the reader forgets, Ben's eyes are BLUE. Not green, brown, or orange: blue. In this book I love the complexity given to Ben's new love interest (a beautiful African girl) and the story that unfolded around them. It also didn't hurt that Ben and Ned are separated for the majority of the first half of the book and Ben gets slapped around quite a bit by his handlers (I'm kinda evil...I enjoyed that). Jacques is brilliant as usual, and I can't wait to see the next installment in this series.
—Rachel
