Rise of the Slippery Sea Monster (Adventures of the Steampunk Pirates) by Gareth P Jones
| Rise of the Slippery Sea Monster (Adventures of the Steampunk Pirates) by Gareth P Jones | |
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| Category: Confident Readers | |
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Reviewer: John Lloyd
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| Summary: This series has never reached outstanding heights, but despite a slightly pedestrian start the benefits of it all still manage to shine out in this fourth entry, which you can easily see the young classifying as 'really quite good'. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 160 | Date: January 2016 |
| Publisher: Stripes Publishing | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781847156648 | |
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The thing about pirates and their treasure is that once they have won it, they then have to keep control of it. Mutineers, enemy pirates, and those pesky good people, all step in with their say about what happens to it. Oh, and you can now add to that list a huge sea monster, that is capable of cutting its way through a perfectly circular porthole it makes in your treasure storage and helping itself. Is it any wonder that our heroic Steampunk Pirates need to combine forces with a returning character (last met in book two) to put paid to this new horror?
With the last book in this series before this appearing to offer a perfect place to end, and end very well, it was a pleasant surprise to see further entries coming. Until, that is, I started reading this one. With a mutinous character so obviously kept in proceedings to add drama at the expense of logic, and quirky interruptions from the author, it all felt a touch second-rate, compared to what had gone before. That's not to say it's awful, but things felt a little too easy, and gags about 'if a coconut falls on a robotic pirate on a treasure island and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?' kind of fell flat.
However, things soon picked up. I loved the very oddness of the returning character last time, and while he's a little under-used here it certainly peps things up more than did seeing the cameo appearance of those pesky good people. It means that this volume is perhaps not perfectly self-contained, but I doubt it would cause many problems – the drama is pretty much straightforward, and I can't see a young reader needing help in following things. The pirates still think their cabin girl is a boy, they still interact with a strong sense of character and a lot of self-esteem when you consider how ridiculously unlikely their very existence and circumstance is. And the steampunk approach to creating typically atypical roustabout pirate adventures is still to the fore, bringing us almost into a cartoonish Jules Verne alternate world.
Things here are cartoonish, from the characters down to the dramas. But in adept hands like our author here, that's to be recommended. The early feeling I had of this being a misguided return to the series was by the finish quite diminished, and the target audience will see less of the obviousness and more of the enjoyable wackiness. I must thank the publishers for my review copy.
That last time I speak of is here. A slightly richer nautical-edged quest can be found with the series starting with The Map to Everywhere by Carrie Ryan and John Parke Davis. You might also enjoy Escape from Planet Bogey (Pet Defenders) by Gareth P Jones and Steve May.
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You can read more book reviews or buy Rise of the Slippery Sea Monster (Adventures of the Steampunk Pirates) by Gareth P Jones at Amazon.com.
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