Reviews for Pirate

The average rating for Pirate based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-12-31 00:00:00 Kevin Williams Four and a half star. The book contains two stories of two men. Both are called Martin Law. Both are born in a small Scottish town called Greenock, but they live in very different time. One is a youth in his early twenties who travels with his friends to Riviera in his semester holiday; he never returns; overwhelmed by the easiness of earning money with drugs in the end of nineteen eighties. The other Martin Law is a doctor with dubious education, we never learn whether he is qualified to call himself as such, but this is how he applies for a position of a ship doctor on a slave trader ship in 1698. The two stories are told in alternating chapters, which made the reading burdensome, perhaps because there was such a big difference of period. After three or four chapters I have decided to read the story of young Martin continually, skipping chapters with the 17 century Martin and then I returned to his story. The reading was much easier and I enjoyed the stories more. Young Martin Law's character was pictured so vividly and with such a perfection, it was easy to paint a picture of him in my mind. He was a very self centered creation, everything in his life was judged by him by the degree of satisfaction he was able to fish out of the situation. His love, respectively sex scenes were some times quite steamy and I have realized this was the first time I have read steamy sex scenes told by a man. (His story was written in the first person). In my opinion his chaotic life, his sporadic, predictable haphazard decisions and his preoccupation with girls, whom he viewed purely as objects had hurt his story. I liked the Martin from the 17th century better. He was also running away from Greenock, but we are not told anything of his life before he boarded the ship in Plymouth. The ship ventured to the coast of Africa, for hunting for slaves. The character of this Martin was, in contrast to the young Martin, the opposite, really. He was compassionate, seeking the well being of his fellow seamen and even slaves above his own interest. His intelligence made him to overcome the nasty captain of his ship and he takes over the command. He turns his ship and his crew to piracy, because there is no other way for him at that time of history to escape the injustice of slave trade.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-01-18 00:00:00 Chelsea Cox Twin plots alternate in this somewhat unfulfilling novel about two Scots named Martin Law who -- in very different times and very different ways -- step outside of the bounds of law-abiding life. The first Martin is a young university student summering in the Riviera with a few classmates in the early 1990s. A chance meeting, coupled with a greater taste for adventure than his pals, leads contemporary Martin to ditch the campground and squat in a posh yacht with his enigmatic and shady new French pal. One thing leads to another, and soon he's ditched his studies and his family, and is into drug dealing, then some strange boating, before finally settling down with a Scandinavian beauty, having a kid, and opening a bar in Marbella. Meanwhile, alternating chapters tell the story of 18th-century Martin, who has completed his studies to become a doctor and signed on to be ship's doctor. The boat is a poorly commanded vessel destined to partake in the slave trade, and it doesn't take long for him to realize that he can't be a party to such evil. Some swashbuckling later, he emerges as a pirate captain. The parallel Martin's are basically good guys who drift into lives of crime, but the twin storylines don't add up to much more than a well-done gimmick.