Margaret McCann

Desperate nonsense, this book. Piracy and piety melted and moulded into an absurd narrative peopled by pesky kids and gooder than God or darker than the Devil adults with a few curved balls thrown in like sachets of ketchup to liven up a tired hamburger. I cannot, really cannot understand how anyone could like anything about it and its absurd storyline and clichés of characters. I did joyfully abandon it after 123 pages.....this is not a spoiler alert, but on p.123, cops asked thousands.....thousands apparently....of kids who had encountered an intense man who weighed 300 pounds and none remembered him. Now, if there is one thing a child is likely to remember, it's a very overweight, very unpleasant man. At that point, I despaired of the writer ever making an effort to make a decent character or a plausible storyline and I gave up. I had paid quite a lot for my copy and am mad as hell with publishers and bookshops and other writers for hyping and promoting such a rubbish book when hundreds of quality books struggle to get a place on the shop's display stands.