LoveReading Says
LoveReading Says
Absolutely dazzling. With exemplary research that beautifully integrates details of time and place, outstanding characterisation that rings with empathy and authenticity, and powerfully resonant themes, Celia Rees’ Pirates is a true triumph of historic fiction.
I could say what a swashbuckling adventure this is. How brilliantly the book conjures the thrills and dangers of life on the piratical high seas; what an incredible page-turner it is. And, while Pirates! certainly is all these things, it’s also much, much more. Centred around two extraordinary young women readers will truly care about, it conveys the brutality of slavery in the West Indies, and how women were but pawns in a man’s world - forced into slavery on white-owned plantations, and enslaved by marriage, too.
Nancy is the free-spirited daughter of a merchant. Minerva is a strong young woman enslaved in Jamaica. Following his death, Nancy travels to Jamaica, where she meets Minerva on her father’s plantation, and they immediately strike up a bond. As grotty circumstances escalate and close in, the young women flee the lives the world has set out for them by becoming pirates. There’s tremendous tension, epic action, and a gorgeous sense of sisterhood (and romance, too) as the women sail the world determined to live the lives they deserve. May this reissue make its way to legions of new readers - teenagers, young adults and adults alike. I can’t recommend it highly enough.
Joanne Owen
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About
Pirates! Synopsis
From the author of the bestselling and award-winning Witch Child, comes another outstanding historical novel.
When two young women meet under extraordinary circumstances in the eighteenth-century West Indies, they are unified in their desire to escape their oppressive lives.
The first is a slave, forced to work in a plantation mansion and subjected to terrible cruelty at the hands of the plantation manager.
The second is a spirited and rebellious English girl, sent to the West Indies to marry well.
But fate ensures that one night the two young women have to save each other and run away to a life no less dangerous but certainly a lot more free. As pirates, they roam the seas, fight pitched battles against their foes and become embroiled in many a heart-quickening adventure.
Written in brilliant and sparkling first-person narrative, this is a wonderful novel in which Celia Rees has brought the past vividly and intimately to life.
About This Edition
| ISBN: |
9781526632302 |
| Publication date: |
14th October 2021 |
| Author: |
Celia Rees |
| Publisher: |
Bloomsbury YA an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing PLC |
| Format: |
Paperback |
| Pagination: |
426 pages |
| Primary Genre |
Young Adult Fiction
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| Other Genres: |
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Author
About Celia Rees
Celia Rees was born and went to school in Solihull, in the West Midlands. She now lives in Leamington Spa with her husband and teenage daughter, Catrin. After gaining a degree in History and Politics from Warwick University, she taught English in comprehensive schools in Coventry for seventeen years. It was during this time that she began to write. Celia’s first book was published in 1993, a thriller for teenagers.
Celia now divides her time between writing, talking to readers in schools and libraries, and teaching creative writing on the University of Warwick’s Open Studies Programme. She writes for older children and teenagers and gets her inspiration from the world around her: newspaper stories, people she meets, places she visits. Celia particularly likes museums and art galleries. She first had the idea for Witch Child on a trip to the American museum near Bath.
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