Bloody Jack By L. A. Meyer Release Date: Buy it Today Harcourt Paperbacks Ratings Action Romance Characters Overall Purchase on Amazon. Purchase at Powell’s. Find independent bookstores near you.

Jacky Farber was born Mary, but realized at around the age of 12 (or at least that was her best guess) that life as a street urchin girl had no future in the early 1800s. At least as a boy, people would trust her to hold a horse and give her a coin in return. Her daring masquerade led her to the harbor where she managed to become a ship’s boy in Her Majesty’s Royal Navy, and so begins her adventures as Jacky Farber. She earns the nickname “Bloody” Jacky after a fight against a crew of pirates.

Learning to sail while falling in love with a fellow ship’s boy, Mary has many wacky adventures aboard the HMS Dolphin as she tries to disguise the fact that she’s a girl. She’s very creative in this endeavor and even creates a fake cod piece just in case. Unfortunately, her girlish looks aren’t overlooked by all, especially one of the ship’s more desperate and ruthless characters, who likes to pray on little boys, if you know what I mean (and yes, you probably know what I mean).

I enjoyed this book a great deal. It’s another one people kept recommending to me and another where the first twenty pages read kind of slowly, but as soon as I was hooked, I wanted to read it straight through. I’m a big fan of the “woman dressed as a man” genre, when it’s done well. Unfortunately it too often ends up being silly. Thankfully, author L. A. Meyer did a very good job of setting up Jacky as a character that makes sense. Her reasons for her transformation are logical for the time and her status as a girl street urchin. At the time, there was really no lesser social position. She had no opportunities until she got the guts to make her own.

One thing I didn’t appreciate is how clearly the book was set up for a sequel. Apparently every book in the series ends on a giant cliffhanger, setting up Jacky’s next adventure. At least with five volumes already out, I’ve got some books to read before I catch up with the current cliffhanger. It really annoys me, though, when a book so clearly goes “Oh look, the story isn’t over!!!! Good luck waiting another year for the next one!”

Whenever I read a book like this–a young girl masquerading as a boy–the girl always decides she’s dying when she gets her first period. I have to wonder what the truth to that is. Granted, these girls don’t tend to have a female role model, but a lot of earlier societies were far more open about sex and the human body than ours is. I tried to do some research on it, but I can’t find anything to back up medieval or 1800s societies not talking about menstruation. I can understand the idea of thinking they’re dying, but it still seems a little over used in these kinds of books.

Another aspect I appreciated about this book was how Jacky still has a connection with other women and doesn’t look down on those who are feminine. Now, I’m not sure how realistic it is when the girl masquerading as a boy just wants to be a girl sometimes, but, I’m willing to go along with it for the sake of the story. Jacky has her girly moments, sews herself a dress and wants to be seen as a girl by her boyfriend, and I think with her it’s always clear that this isn’t going to be her permanent life. This is a temporary situation to put food in her belly, but she seems to intend to leave the ship in the future and act like a girl again. This is different than other books in the genre that I’ve read, where the character makes much more of a commitment to acting like a guy for the rest of her life, or at least her professional career. The Alanna books of course pop to mind in this genre, and Alanna is very clearly making a commitment to acting like a boy as long as it takes to become a knight, and even then, she knows she’ll always have to prove she can be more of a man than any man. Jacky on the other hand isn’t planning to be a sailor for life and seems just as happy to be done with it by the end of the book, except for the inconvenience of being torn away from her love.

Ratings Reasons:
Action 5 – Fast-paced and exciting, the story of Jacky Faber moves along at a pace that makes it hard to put the book down, because as soon as one adventure is over, another is about to begin.

Romance 4 –I liked how the book dealt with early teenage love, especially given the fact that Jacky and her love interest are serving together in a relatively small space and with one of them masquerading as a boy.

Characters 5 – All the characters in the book felt like fleshed out people. Most of them start out as stock characters, but they grow as Jacky’s tale goes on.

Overall 5– This was a great adventure book that I’ll definitely recommend to others, especially fans of pirate/sea faring adventures.

Extras:

The main site for the Bloody Jack books can be found at jackyfarber.com. The site includes excerpts and further information about the world Jacky lives in. You can even find maps of London and Boston (second book).

Want to know more about pirates? Check out this site for everything you want to know about the history of piracy, which has been going on about as long as man has sailed the seas.

In the mood for more seafaring adventure? Check out The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi or Pirates! by Cecelia Rees. It’s been many years since I read Avi’s book, but I remember enjoying it as a child. Suppose it’s time to find a new copy of that book and reread it. I read Pirates! recently, and I enjoyed it for the setting and adventure, but found the romance to be rather forced and uninteresting. There’s also Piratica by Tanith Lee, but I didn’t enjoy it very much. It was okay, but… nothing special. Also, I’ve been told that Inda and Fox by Sherwood Smith (an author whose other books I adore) has pirates in them, I just haven’t had a chance to read them yet. In fact, the livejournal group for her books has a nice little list of pirate books going on here.

Parents: 13+ There are vague mentions of the existence of sex and sodomy, and of course the issue of menstruation. As long as the parent is willing to discuss the contents, I don’t think there are any real problems for readers under thirteen.

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