Review: The Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

Genre: Young-Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Pages: 320
Series: Daughter of the Pirate King #1 (Duology)
Release Date: February 28, 2017
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

Alosa is the daughter of the pirate king (hence, the name) and she’s on a mission for her father to locate a third of a map that, when complete, will lead to an island of untold riches stolen by sirens. To get the map, she has to pretend to be a captive on an ship so that she has time to search it. Only, her captor is the annoyingly perceptive, clever and quite good-looking first mate of the ship.

But fear not! Alosa won’t let him stop her. She is, after all, the daughter of the pirate king, trained by the king himself and adept at everything. She clever and skilled and can do anything. She’s one of the best pirates to ever exist. Except that she’s not. She’s skilled, I’ll give her that, and she has her smart moments, but her “awesomeness’ is blown up. I can’t help but think that the author had Celaena Sardothian in mind when she wrote Alosa. And for most people, that wouldn’t be a problem. But that fact that I fucking hate Sardothian, a feeling made worse because everyone (Sarah J. Maas most of all) is fucking obsessed with her, puts a damper on things.

Thankfully, the author takes a more humourous approach with Alosa and I actually like her. It’s not her fault that things just keep conveniently happening to her liking.

Besides, and I’m about to give some very important advice here, this is not a novel to be taken too seriously. It has a simple prose, it’s fairly short and well-paced. Both Alosa and Riden are likable character (Riden more than Alosa). It’s written to be an entertaining read with some silliness. I wish someone had given me this advice and maybe I wouldn’t have spent the first half of the novel royally pissed off at how ridiculous some things were.

The romance was initially a problem because it started right in the first chapter with her meeting the attractive first mate who’s a good shot. It made me roll my eyes at the obviousness. But it got quite good after that. Alosa and Riden have chemistry and I loved their banter.

Still, up to the 75% point, I was iffy about how much I liked it and whether I would read the sequel. But the last quarter was quite good and I liked the direction the story took. I liked how the book ended as well, and I’m interested to see where it will go. Also, since I now know not to take it too seriously, I’ll enjoy it more. And, it’s a duology! I love duologies!

Overall, this is a fun book that can be tiny bit annoying and silly, but is still a fun read and the addition of pirates is great. The sirens aren’t well-explained and I think the fantasy and world building could use some work, but it’s still worth checking out.