Bloody Jack

Hey bloggers, blog-readers, and web-surfers,

This afternoon I finished a very interesting tale by the name of...

Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy

Anyways, it's all about this girl named Mary whose family died of the pox or the plague or some such awful disease, so she's living on the streets with her gang. We're in London in the late 1700's, and the life of a girl on the street isn't the best.

Among her friends is the leader of the gang, Charlie. He has dreams of going out to sea and seeing what there is to see. One day, after begging for pennies, Mary goes out looking for Charlie and finds him dead. She then resolves to carry out his dream of going out to sea. There's only one problem; she's a girl.

She took Charlie's clothes though, and she has yet to hit puberty, and she cut her hair, so she doesn't much look like a girl, but that doesn't change facts. She made her way down to the docks and got herself a spot as a Ship's Boy on the HMS Dolphin. The first few problems made their way quickly, among them being she soon gained a fancy for another of the Ship's Boys, a man named Sloat seems to know what she is, ...Or does he? And the men all share a bathroom and she can't be seen sitting down every time she has to use it.

Some other problems wait awhile to surface... Things like finally hitting puberty and growing in all the wrong places to look like a boy, her mates starting to distrust her, and finally telling Jaimy- excuse me, showing Jaimy she's a girl, only to have to hide his sudden interest in her from everyone else. ...It's kinda hard to kiss your new boyfriend unnoticed when you're on a ship with a huge crew and several good friends and no one can know you're a girl.

Overall, it was an excellent story. Jacky was very, very believable. So were the rest of the characters, actually, but since it's told from Jacky's point of view, you can see just how real she is. She's a real person, for a moment. She has real fears, real moments of bravery, real sneakiness, real soft-heartedness, and a real ability to cuss out her buds when they tease her. (Though she only describes how she swears at them, you hardly ever see it happen.) And throughout the book you can see not only how she grows by her own description, but how she matures by her language. Towards the beginning, she had a thick accent, not at all ladylike, while as you get closer to the end, little by little, her speech becomes more sophisticated. That's probably one of my favorite parts, actually being able to physically see the main character grow by her language changing.

I read a lot of books, and usually I can see right through them. The main character has no faults, or there are continuity gaps, or the use of language is way off, or something, but not this one. This one was superb, I'll not be forgetting it anytime soon.

I gotta rate it at least PG-13 though, not for younger readers. Older teens will probably enjoy it.

Til next time!

-Kj