Jacky Faber Series
After reading several very serious and high-brow books, I binge read six Jacky Faber Books.
What is the Jacky Faber book series, you ask? The books follow the adventures of an orphan girl who disguises herself as a boy and joins a Royal Navy ship to escape her tragic life, leading (eventually) to a life of piracy. I read this series when I was a teenager. After reading a very disappointing young adult pirate book (see review of “The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy”), I decided to revisit the first book in the series called “Bloody Jack: Being An Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary “Jacky” Faber, Ship's Boy” by L.A. Meyer. Just like its title, this book series is Extra, and I love it.
The book is written in British 1800s-style street vernacular that is engaging and hilarious, but also means I hate the audiobook with a fiery passion. I DO NOT recommend the audiobooks. Since the book is written as if a street urchin is speaking the book can be challenging to read until you get Jacky’s dialect down. However, the result is a super immersive novel with a heroine who has a distinct and ostentatious, if mildly obnoxious, personality.
I think these are the best naval and piracy books that I’ve ever read; it’s even better that they feature a female character. Jacky just doesn’t give a f**k. She’s greedy and has no pretense about it. She isn’t intentionally malicious but she makes decisions with the goal of having more money in her pocket. She kills people, but mostly in battle or to protect others and herself. In fact, Jacky prides herself on taking the moral high ground, and not killing indiscriminately. This ultimately makes her more likable, and allows these books to be in the “teen/children” section instead of the adult section.
These novels are sort of like a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, or a Marvel movie. Jacky gets herself in the craziest situations and somehow manages to get herself out against all odds. As a consequence, the plots of each subsequent book get crazier and crazier as the author tries to one-up himself. Jacky gets captured by a slave ship, meets Indians along the Mississippi River, and fights with Napoleon in Prussia; these books are wild.
The author includes characters of different races, sexualities, and “professions,” but the series isn’t quite as woke as 2020+ teen novels and TV shows. This is no Bridgerton. Although there are people of color, the author writes them into roles that are realistic for the time period. Jacky is frequently ignorant, offensive, and rude, but it allows the author to show when Jacky is out of line. Sometimes these liberal and moralist moments are a tad on-the-nose, but they aren’t as pretentious as some other books I’ve read (*cough cough* “The Lady’s Guide to Petticoats and Piracy”)
One thing that really gets to me is the author’s insistence that Jacky remain a “maiden” throughout the series. Her virginity is directly connected to her value. She frequently uses her virginity to prove she is worthy to the men she meets on her adventures.
After the first book, Jacky becomes betrothed to the first guy she kisses. In every subsequent book, even though Jacky is promised to another, she meets a new cute boy and usually does a little more than hold his hand. It’s weird that the author maintains that Jacky be a virgin but writes her as unfaithful. I think it’s the author’s way of letting Jacky be the virgin and the whore simultaneously. I can’t say that this is feminist, but it does make for quite juicy and entertaining scenes.
This series is not perfect, but, damn, it’s fun to read. Am I going to stop reading? No way, it is so fun and it is exactly what I need right now.
The Don’t Call Me Ishmael Official Book Rating, Sponsored by The School for Whale-y Smart Girls:
4.5/5 Whales - Way Better than Moby Dick