Pirates of the Poesasian

by Chris Turner

A clash of swords and wits

Hero? Anti-hero? A young, cocksure trickster, outlawed from his home fishing village, falls into the hands of ruthless pirates who would spill their friends’ blood over a cup of arrack. They scour the Poesasian looking for fresh plunder, possibly recruits to their band. The outlaw must use every ounce of ingenuity to survive amidst these brigands. Along the way he gains allies— rogues like himself—who in the course of finding their own way, help save his skin and fight hand-in-hand in one of the fiercest ship-to-ship battles the Poesasian coast has ever seen!

Genres: Pirates

156 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 8, 2012

About the author

Chris is a prolific author of fantasy, adventure and science fiction. His books include: Swords and Skulls, The Starship Rogue series, Bindu, Haloband, The Dragon Sea Chronicles, The Alien Alliance series, Icarus, The Relic Hunter series, Beastslayer, Rogues of Bindar, Future Destinies, Fantastic Realms and Denibus Ar.

Chris is also a prolific painter, with nearly a thousand oil art works to his name. He has been involved in extensive studio recording. After graduating from University of Waterloo in Honours Mathematics and Computer Science he backpacked and biked throughout Europe and Asia in the 90s before teaching computer programming courses in Ottawa, Canada.

Chris’s other interests are guitar, cycling, meditation, canoeing and tennis.

Reviews

[Robert Negut · Rating 2 out of 5]

I must start by saying that the author sure liked to show off his vocabulary and penchant for flowery descriptions. Worse, this bled into the characters, the result being even more jarring because this style is also used to depict the thoughts or speech of those highly unlikely to even know a fair number of those words, much less use them so often. And the fact that the point of view suddenly, and usually very briefly, switches in the middle of some scenes only adds to the confusion.
Other than that, though some events unfold, it doesn't quite feel like much is happening until the last two chapters, and either way the book is quite short. In addition, some things, such as Baus' magic dagger, are insufficiently explained and tend to simply appear at certain moments and be ignored at others when they'd definitely be useful. And while I'm at things, should also point out the highly unusual lack of any ranged weapons bar those catapults on one ship's deck. No cannons, no bows or crossbows, no pistols, nothing, which doesn't make any sense.

[Annette Gisby · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was difficult for me to get into. While well-written with interesting characters and a sound plot, the style of writing did not appeal to me. The language was a bit too flowery, the prose a bit too purple for my taste. I much prefer simpler, plainer language. This book would have seemed quite at home in an English Literature class to be studied and dissected, but as something to read for enjoyment's sake, it fell flat for me. This is just a personal opinion, lots of people do enjoy that style of writing.

There is adventure on the high seas, murder, magic and mayhem. The world building is good, from the squalor of seaside inns to life aboard ship amongst the pirates. Baus becomes more of a likeable character the further into the book we go, at first I wasn't too sure about him.

Give it a go if you enjoy a good adventure tale with pirates and rogues galore.

Review copy supplied by author.