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Cinnamon and Gunpowder: A Novel
Eli Brown | 2014
9
9.5 (2 Ratings)
Book Rating
Cinnamon and Gunpowder reminds me a lot of Treasure Island. Or at least of my childhood memories of reading Treasure Island, as it's been decades since I read it. The book is told from the viewpoint of Owen Wedgwood, a chef who finds himself kidnapped by a famous pirate and forced to cook gourmet meals for her in exchange for his life. As a home cook who's had a small amount of actual training, I really enjoyed his descriptions of making do with only the cooking tools the ship has on hand and whatever rations he could lay his hands on. The creativity he displays in making amazing meals out of almost nothing is one of the best parts of the book. (And the descriptions of those meals - YUM.)

The formatting is set up as a kind of personal ship's log, each part dated and written down after the events happen. Wedgwood (or "Spoons," as the crew calls him) even mentions how he hides it and leaves out a decoy log, since he also writes down his dreams (and plans!) of escaping the pirates.

Some of the events in the book are incredibly predictable, but there are still a few surprises. I was a little disappointed when one thing in particular happened; I saw it coming but hoped that wasn't where the author was going with it. I know that's vague, but I don't want to spoil anything!

I enjoyed learning about Mad Hannah's background and why she's a pirate; she's fighting against the opium trade, and she actually gives Wedgwood a pretty accurate summary of the terrible things the opium trade was responsible for.

Any book that can combine sumptuous description of exotic meals with action and cannonballs will have my attention. And Brown does not shy away from proper action scenes. These are pirates, and fights get brutal. Men lose limbs if not their lives to storms and Navy bombardments. Keeping order on a pirate ship involves lashings and brute force. The book doesn't shrink from those, but it also gets philosophical with Wedgwood's description of flavors, and almost comedic with the images of using cannonballs as pestles for grinding herbs. It's that contrast and variety that makes this book so much fun to read.

You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.com
  
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Laura Doe (1350 KP) rated Never Never in Books

Oct 23, 2022  
Never Never
Never Never
Serena Valentino | 2022 | Fiction & Poetry
8
8.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
Serena Valentino’s books are amazing. This is the story of Captain Hook that I never knew that I needed.
We find out how Captain Hook learnt of Neverland in the first place… when he was a child he fell out of his pram and ended up in Neverland. He then spent the rest of his childhood years trying to get back there, when he realised he couldn’t, he decided that he was going to become and pirate and spent all of his years in school learning everything there was to know about pirates and ships so that when he graduated, he could join up and live out his dream.
This book not only gives us a backstory about Captain Hook, but we also have some pirate tales added in, with stories of Blackbeard, Calico Jack, Anne Bonny and Mary Read. This just helps to give the book a little more depth around the backstory.
We also get to revisit Circe and Lucinda again, with Lucinda being as deceitful as ever and Circe still trying to fix everything her mothers have messed up. Although I didn’t see the twist at the end coming, but that just made the book better in my opinion.
Although it’s a short book, I didn’t feel like the story was rushed in the slightest. And as with all of the other villains books, I started to feel some sympathy towards Captain Hook and understood how he became the person that he is in Peter Pan.
  
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
2003 | Action, Adventure, Fantasy
acting,story (0 more)
Why Rum Gone
Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) plays our beloved pirate to love and hate in this adaption of a Disney ride. The movie from the word go is filled with action,comedy and suspense as we follow our captain take possession of a powerful boat with the help of Orlando bloom and try to rescue our damsel in distress Nightly and recover the last gold coin of a lost treasure to try and break and long time curse. This movie storyline took time and patience to make sure everything flowed right and it does. To me there is not a moment of down time and my favorite line when marooned on an island is "Why Rum Gone" Enjoy