RFAK No. 3: Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller

I've been rightly told I need to get more female characters into the books I write.

I'm not sure this is the way to do it.

Because, first of all, there's this:



Not that I mind a good kissing book. "The Princess Bride," for example. A great kissing book.

Then there's Tricia Levenseller's "Daughter of the Pirate King." Also a kissing book. But it's kissing for all the wrong reasons.

I've just had to endure two foreplay scenes within seconds of each other. With different men. And all for nefarious reasons: Princess Alosa isn't above using sex, or at least the promise of it, this is the Whitney Awards we're talking about here, to get what she wants. I'm sure nothing will consummate until Alosa weds the winsome First Mate Ridenm but even then I don't want my fourteen-year-old daughter reading this book, marketed as it is as YA fantasy (that's the category I'm reading for the awards, you see).

There's a bit of this here as well:



I am also guilty of this. I'm very aware of this. Which is why it stands out so much in this book.

Witness:

"What did you do?" he asks.

I quirk an eyebrow. "What do you mean?"

"You . . . you just changed. You looked off for a moment, but I thought I'd imagined it. Now you look yourself again."

I don't know how to quirk an eyebrow. Raise, maybe? But everyone raises an eyebrow. Too cliche. Invent a new one, apparently. There are better ways to show the confusion (perhaps made a little harder by Alosa's constant shifting between real confusion and feigned confusion).

Also -- spoiler alert -- Alosa is half human, half siren. We learn this right before this exchange. Right after this exchange she's concerned Riden, the dreamy-scummy first mate of the Night whatever pirate ship, senses she's using her gnarly powers. When he could have just been commenting on her taking a pensive moment. In other words, lady, he has no idea what's going on -- he's just a guy.

There's also a lot of what I call the Neil Diamond Effect: I am, I said. I am, says I. Lots and lots of attribution when attribution could be eliminated to make the dialog flow more smoothly. Trust your readers to know who is saying what, and only offer attribution when there might be doubt, that's the rule I'm struggling to pound into my own head.

There is certainly a woman in this book. But if a guy wrote this, it'd be creepy. And whether it's girl or guy, I can't recommend this book to a YA fantasy audience.