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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A rollicking adventure story for boys, December 12, 2004
This review is from: Ring of the Slave Prince (Hardcover)
This is the story of Tom O'Conner, a 14 year old boy that lives with his mother and half-sister in an inn, run by a not-so-pleasant fellow. Tom is forever seeking his fortune, by venturing out in search of sunken treasure so that he can help his family. However, he finds his fortune not in the shape of gold or jewels, but in the form of a Spanish sailor and an African slave. Or so he thinks. For the slave is actually an African prince, and rich rewards await those who bring him home.
However, things do not exactly go smoothly and in order to obtain this fortune, Tom undertakes many adventures - including fighting sharks, slavery, witch burnings, pirates, shipwreck and many other things besides! Along the way he meets a wide range of characters, ranging from the rather dubiously nicknamed Ramon the pious, to the nastiest pirate of all, CW Bull, charming many of them with his tall tales and polite manner (the rest, for various good reasons, want him dead). The result is not so much an adventure to trade a freed slave for a fortune, but more a story of friendship, courage and above all, how thin the boundaries are between right and wrong.
This is definitely a book aimed at boys, probably teenagers, with a good dose of macabre imagery (the fate of Innocent's scribe being particularly noteworthy) and non-stop action. The writing style seems a little stilted, which quite probably comes from it being translated from Danish, with some conversations making a bizarre diversion partway through, and this is what has lead to my somewhat lower-then-it-deserves rating.
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
An unenjoyable read -- Not worth the time or effort, April 15, 2006
This review is from: Ring of the Slave Prince (Hardcover)
I honestly thought this book was going to be something of an adventure, but as always it took far too long to get itself to the major point and purpose of the story and main character itself. In the beginning the story highlights the hardships of Tom O'Connor's life working in a inn owned by a pompous Spanish-man, Senor Lopez, who treats his mother and his sister (whom he hates just as much as Lopez, and her in return) like animals to be treated horribly and paid lightly. Tom in turn hates the man and his equally despised by everyone in the Island of Nevis for the Irish Blood that runs through his veins.
He apparently is so used to insults thrown his way because of this that he hardly seems bothered by it anymore. He is also full of contempt because of his lifestyle and his Irish blood, that its hard to like him. In his spare time he rows out to sea and searches for valuable items under water and just when he's having a off day at sea he comes across two "shipwrecked" people, a Spaniard and a slave boy no older than him. He stashes the slave away and tends to the Spaniard around the time a Bishop comes to the inn searching for a seer named Zamora, who scares him into telling him where the seer has gone.
From there the book just becomes one crude tale of obvious hatred and self-hatred for one's self and his situations. I honestly tried to enjoy the book, but in the end it was far too dull and angry for me to complete. Not because of the way the author depicts the time line (1639), nor most of the semi-gritty cruelty and reality of slavery when Tom comes across a Plantation. But because of the anger the character carries and the crude characters he meets along his adventures.
It just was not a pleasing romp to even "skim" through at the least. All in all I hardly enjoyed this book and I cannot recommend it to anyone. If your looking for a book concerning slavery, pirates, aventure, or any of the above, look elsewhere. -- [a 2 out of 5]
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4.0 out of 5 stars
every boy's dream of adventure, June 10, 2009
This would make a great movie with one incredible twist after another. The adventures of the earlier chapters become the tall tales of incorrigible liar Tom O'Connor in later chapters. Tom leaves his home on a 17th century Caribbean island, seeking the slave he believes will be his fortune. In turn he becomes a shark fisherman, a blacksmith, sugar plantation overseer, cabin boy, castaway and pirate. It's all a bit unbelievable, but then that's the fun of it. This book is every boy's dream of adventure.
A major theme is attitudes toward slavery, and along the way Tom's perception's change. The passages on the sugar plantation are tragic. Some comments will definitely be offensive to African American readers, but then we are meant to be appalled at them. In contrast, the pirate section is as light and comic as Pirates of the Caribbean.
I read the book in translation from the Danish. The author uses strong language that some American audiences might object to, but not inappropriately to the time and characters. Tom does a lot of heavy drinking for one so young, but I suspect that is not inappropriate to the time period either. I never quite figured out the odd switches between present and past tense or the use of the third person instead of the second. Sometimes it was Spanish-speaking characters, but at others it was virulently anti-Spanish Englishmen, so why are they using Spanish sentence structure? There was some sloppy editing such as on p 132 when Sugar George says "I was the oldest" and on the next page his older brother dies. But all in all, a good read.
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