I was cruising through my stores of Drafted posts that have never borne Bloggy Fruits when I realized that I haven't written anything on the Bloody Jack books yet.
*Hits self on forehead*
The Bloody Jack series, by L. A. Meyer, is a trillion kinds of awesome. Seriously.
The first book is called Bloody Jack (no surprises there), and it is about a scrawny little girl named Mary who lives in London in the 1800s-ish. When she becomes an orphan, she joins a gang of kids running around London stealing drunk peoples' clothing and fighting other gangs. THEN, her buddy is killed by Muck, a creep who sells bodies to doctors, and Mary decides to leave the gang by dressing up as a boy, joining the Navy ship The Dolphin, and renaming herself Jacky. While in the Navy, she goes through puberty (she thinks she's dying at first), falls in love, and kills pirates and child molesters.
The second book is The Curse of the Blue Tattoo, and it's actually the first one in the series that I read. You KNOW a series is good when you can read the second one, and still follow the plot and like the characters. Jacky is punted off The Dolphin and sent to the Lawson Peabody School for Girls.
That's right, this gun-toting, shiv-wielding, spitting, swearing, skinny little pirate-killer is gonna become a bleedin' lady of manners and wot-not.
I am not going to get into the other seven or so books, but suffice to say, they are also really neat reads.
My Uncle R, who is pretty into 19th century sailing and ships and boats and stuff, also says the books are both really good and fairly accurate. I just find it neat that we can both read the same book and enjoy it equally.
I am just going to say this: I have read a LOT of books with kick-ass female protagonists, and if I were going to need backup or assistance or a friend from one of those books, I would pick Jacky Faber. (Or Hermione Granger. But that comparison's really not fair, because Hermione's magic....)
Jacky is a scrawny, smart, funny, brave-but-also-cowardly, snarky, sneaky, unforgettable little con-artist of a character. She's loyal, a bit of a hell-raiser, and tries to get along with everybody, except if they are evil/mean/cruel, in which case she concocts diabolical ways to get revenge on them.
The writing in the first half of the first book is a little funky because there are a hell of a lot of run on sentences much like this one, but they actually flow really well. I don't usually enjoy Streams of Consciousness, but I enjoy Jacky's. About midway through the first book, though, she starts to talk normally (as normal as 19th century pirate killer talk on Navy ships gets) because she starts to get some schoolin' in.
The thing that really gets me about this series is that even though it reads like a teenage girl telling you what's going on in her life, the series is actually written by L. A. Meyer, a fifty-year-old-ish guy in Maine. His website (linky goodness here) actually leads to either his art gallery's page or Jacky's page. Continue to Jacky's page! He sells autographed books for $24 (US, I think) and t-shirts (he actually makes them, and they are actually cool) for $24 (US again, I think).
Also, luckily for us all, there is a new book (9th in the series, I think) coming out in September.
Have at 'em, mates!
Captain Radical
*Hits self on forehead*
The Bloody Jack series, by L. A. Meyer, is a trillion kinds of awesome. Seriously.
The first book is called Bloody Jack (no surprises there), and it is about a scrawny little girl named Mary who lives in London in the 1800s-ish. When she becomes an orphan, she joins a gang of kids running around London stealing drunk peoples' clothing and fighting other gangs. THEN, her buddy is killed by Muck, a creep who sells bodies to doctors, and Mary decides to leave the gang by dressing up as a boy, joining the Navy ship The Dolphin, and renaming herself Jacky. While in the Navy, she goes through puberty (she thinks she's dying at first), falls in love, and kills pirates and child molesters.
The second book is The Curse of the Blue Tattoo, and it's actually the first one in the series that I read. You KNOW a series is good when you can read the second one, and still follow the plot and like the characters. Jacky is punted off The Dolphin and sent to the Lawson Peabody School for Girls.
That's right, this gun-toting, shiv-wielding, spitting, swearing, skinny little pirate-killer is gonna become a bleedin' lady of manners and wot-not.
I am not going to get into the other seven or so books, but suffice to say, they are also really neat reads.
My Uncle R, who is pretty into 19th century sailing and ships and boats and stuff, also says the books are both really good and fairly accurate. I just find it neat that we can both read the same book and enjoy it equally.
I am just going to say this: I have read a LOT of books with kick-ass female protagonists, and if I were going to need backup or assistance or a friend from one of those books, I would pick Jacky Faber. (Or Hermione Granger. But that comparison's really not fair, because Hermione's magic....)
Jacky is a scrawny, smart, funny, brave-but-also-cowardly, snarky, sneaky, unforgettable little con-artist of a character. She's loyal, a bit of a hell-raiser, and tries to get along with everybody, except if they are evil/mean/cruel, in which case she concocts diabolical ways to get revenge on them.
The writing in the first half of the first book is a little funky because there are a hell of a lot of run on sentences much like this one, but they actually flow really well. I don't usually enjoy Streams of Consciousness, but I enjoy Jacky's. About midway through the first book, though, she starts to talk normally (as normal as 19th century pirate killer talk on Navy ships gets) because she starts to get some schoolin' in.
The thing that really gets me about this series is that even though it reads like a teenage girl telling you what's going on in her life, the series is actually written by L. A. Meyer, a fifty-year-old-ish guy in Maine. His website (linky goodness here) actually leads to either his art gallery's page or Jacky's page. Continue to Jacky's page! He sells autographed books for $24 (US, I think) and t-shirts (he actually makes them, and they are actually cool) for $24 (US again, I think).
Also, luckily for us all, there is a new book (9th in the series, I think) coming out in September.
Have at 'em, mates!
Captain Radical
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