Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller (review)

Getting kidnapped by pirates is usually a bad thing, but seventeen-year-old Alosa is more pleased than panicked when the crew of the Night Farer steal her away from her own ship. She’s a pirate herself, the daughter of the Pirate King and a dab hand at dealing with grizzled seamen, and she wants to be on this ship, since her father has tasked her with stealing a map from it that could lead him to the treasure-rich island of the sirens. Unfortunately, Riden, her interrogator and guard, is more gorgeous than grizzled, and his good looks are messing with Alosa’s head as the two pirates flirtatiously circle each other, each trying to find out the other’s secrets. Fiery as her scarlet hair, Alosa narrates with a bold and cocky voice; her swagger is backed up by serious fighting skills, and there is pure satisfaction in the scenes where she handily takes down (and sometimes kills) men who have underestimated her, threatened her (both physically and sexually), or simply looked at her wrong. It’s this boldness matched with Riden’s more uptight, well-mannered character that makes their relationship so much fun to watch; she’s the cad, he’s the prude, and traditional gender rules are bucked through witty banter and increasingly undisguised lust. By book’s end Alosa has discovered only a portion of the map, ensuring a sequel that readers will happily climb aboard.