Bloody Jack
Series: Bloody Jack, Book 1
By: L.A. Meyer / Narrated By: Katherine Kellgren
Length: 7 hrs and 22 mins
Katherine Kellgren really makes this fun
Up front: Katherine Kellgren might be an acquired taste. Or you’ll either love her or hate her (and my mom haaaaaaaates her! Has even stopped listening to desperately well-written books because she found her narration to be shrill). I can see her point, and at times my ears almost split because her narration of Bloody Jack had some shrill and fraught moments. Jack is, after all, a girl, with girlish sensibilities and girlish emotional upheavals, and she is prone to fits of hysteria. …enter shrill Kellgren… exit book at your own loss…
Bloody Jack is the story of an orphaned girl, Mary, who chooses a life at sea since she has no options on land, other than to wind up with her dead body being sold to doctors for anatomical dissection. She chooses the name Jack, and binds her chest up real tight, and she learns to walk just as a boy would.
Life at sea is hard, but to her, coming from a life where she had nothing and hunger was always with her, bread filled with weevils is a blessing from on high, and sleeping in a dirty blanket on deck is a delightful way to end the day. I guess that’s what kinda made the book such a treat: It’s nice to listen to a book where the main character has a sense of gratitude instead of being an out and out whiner.
But there is that hysteria thing. As Jack matures, she gets her period and all, she finds herself at the mercy of strong feelings which cannot be contained. And honestly? She doesn’t even try. There were quite a few times where my toes curled cuz I just wanted to smack her to stop the shrieking. A bit of eye-rolling, yes, but if you look at it another way, it can be really somewhat amusing and chucklesome.
There is action galore, a bit of blood and death, prostitutes with hearts of gold (at least if you have a shilling to pay), and even scenes of romance as Jackie just can’t control herself. There is the brotherhood among the ships boys, friendship, pirates, gold, and glory to be had. The book really is a rollicking good time, and even though my nerves were a tad shot by the end (there is ALWAYS the threat of: Will she be discovered to be a girl? What will happen to her if that happens?!?), the ending was such that I’m very much considering getting the next audiobook in the series because a whole new phase of life begins there. And the book doesn’t make that fatal flaw that I hate so much when books are part of a series—namely, leaving a gazillion and six loose threads or ending on a total cliffhanger.
Listen to the narration before you buy to see if you’re a Kellgren devotee or a Kellgren hater.
And as I’m the former, might I say: Rest In Peace, Katherine Kellgren. You did some amazing, amazing work (but my mom still haaaaaaates you. So sorry!).
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