Stay for a Spell

I absolutely loved Amy Coombe's Stay for a Spell! I saw it at work and the premise sounded like so much fun: a princess gets cursed to never leave a bookshop until she can find her heart's desire. Her parents decide to send all of the princes of the realm to try to help because as everyone knows, love's kiss from a prince is sure to break the spell. And so Princess Tanadelle (or Tandy, as we get to know her as), is trying to live her life in the bookshop while every so often she's interrupted by the arrival of another prince.

While sometime a bit predictable (I knew what the pirate Bash had left in Tandy's shop when he stole all her books on curses fairly early on), Stay for a Spell is such a fun read. I liked all the characters. It was super fun seeing all of the princes different spell-breaking attempts. And I was really rooting for Tandy to succeed: with her bookshop, with her curse, and with learning how to do things on her own. I also liked the direction the book went with Tandy's curse: her heart's desire wasn't something cliche. :)

 Stay for a Spell was the perfect cozy fantasy read. I'll definitely keep my eye out for more by Coombe!

Pirate Latitudes

I found Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes at a little free library recently. I remember really liking Timeline (which I believe I read before starting this blog). And it sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a read.

Pirate Latitudes is the story of the privateer Captain Charles Hunter, who, with the unofficial blessing of England's Governor of Jamaica, Sir James Almont, leaves Port Royal with a crew of "loggers" with the intention of attacking the Spanish port of Matanceros and stealing a treasure-laden Spanish ship. 

The narrative was a little all-over the place. At first the book seemed to be following Almont, but once Hunter was introduced, he quickly became the central character. I wish things had gone back and forth between the two characters though - stuff was happening with Almont at Port Royal with his new secretary, Robert Hacklett, that we didn't get to see.

 At face value, the story is interesting enough. Attacking Matanceros is a difficult proposition, and it was interesting how Hunter went about it. The stakes were also consistently high: his crew was captured early, narrowly escaping death. And even the aftermath of the raid against Matanceros was fraught with danger at every turn.

But this book is full of very unsavory and altogether unlikable characters. While in the end I didn't mind Hunter, I spent a lot of the book not caring what happened to him and his crew. Pretty much everyone was a terrible person doing terrible things. I know that this is a historical fiction book, so it's quite possible that there's some truth to the way everyone was acting. But I honestly didn't want to read about it. 

As someone on Goodreads said, Pirate Latitudes "comes across as a [. . .] project never intended to see the light of day." And I can believe that. In a lot of ways, it felt like the book wasn't polished - it was most likely still a draft that Crichton was working on, or something that he never intended to share with others. 

While I did make it through the whole story, Pirate Latitudes definitely was one of my least favourite Crichton books I've read (I honestly think I enjoyed Jurassic Park better, and I wasn't overly fond of that either). Unless you're a huge fan of his, or really enjoy historical novels about pirates, I'd recommend giving this one a miss.