Customer Reviews

Pirate Queen: The Life of Grace O'Malley, 1530-1603

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Having just visited the Clew Bay area of County Mayo, I bought this book hoping for an interesting read about the life of Grace O'Malley and was sorely disappointed. The book is about 5% Grace and 95% general Irish history of the era, which, while important, makes for very dry reading at times. Furthermore, the book suffers from occasional mangled grammar and glaring factual errors, for example, referring to two men once as being uncle-nephew and later as being step-brothers. Although several people in the narrative do have the same name, this kind of mistake is inexcusable if a competent editor had been on board.

Furthermore, the index is woefully incomplete and the one supplied map is not very helpful. There is no scale -- a cardinal sin when printing any map -- and many places and castles mentioned in the book are not on the map at all; their inclusion would have added a lot to my comprehension.

Sail past this book if you want a lively read about Grace O'Malley.

This book on Grace O'Malley is a very well written book. If you're into adventure read this story Grace O'Malley. I traced back my family history and I'm actually related to her. I'm an O'Malley too.