Marie's Reviews > The Queen's Slave Trader: John Hawkyns, Elizabeth I, and the Trafficking in Human Souls

Narrative nonfiction is a tough balance - one has to have academic integrity about what one says, while still building an emotional picture. This book failed on the 'emotional' side of the line, with many unsupportable statements, but it was clearly well-researched and there were interesting footnotes and citations throughout, so it wasn't so bad about it as to be bad.

Though I found the story less thrilling than expected. News flash: racism and slavery! Evil people doing evil stuff! The most compelling part, for me, were accounts of how Hawkyns had to, on occasion, attack people and force them to buy what he was selling! That is a scenario stranger than fiction and I find myself wanting to write a space-merchants story now with lots of gritty evil, because look what actually happened!