In Which There Is Treasure
May. 1st, 2012 06:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileSo I'm a bit out of order on my Bloody Jack books these days! I managed to go back and read the one I'd skipped, which is Rapture of the Deep: Being an Account of the Further Adventure of Jacky Faber, Soldier, Sailor, Mermaid, Spy. In this one, British intelligence kidnaps Jacky right out of her own wedding to force her to go treasure-diving in Florida, bringing up some long-lost gold from a Spanish treasure galleon that had sunk some years ago. There is a hand-waving attempt to explain why they decide to pick a practiced thief for this job, but I still don't get why they didn't keep a much, much closer eye on her.
I am sort of running out of things to say about these books. In traditional Bloody Jack fashion, they are fabulously fun and hilarious if you read them too fast to register all of the wildly problematic bits, like (a) the increasingly weird attempted rape scenes, which are starting to get so weird that they seem to be trying to be funny, (b) all of Jacky's "charming" man-friends being pushy assholes, and (c) Jacky's amazingly selective sense of morality, which careens back and forth between being very modern (in a frequently uncomfortable, Great-White-Savior-y sort of way) and totally non-existent (when the author feels the resulting scenes will be entertaining). In this one, Jacky makes lots of sadfaces at a bullfight, then promptly sets out to become a cockfighting champion; buys a slave and sets her free and keeps her on as a proper employee; and impersonates various ethnicities. It is a bit iffy. I'm not entirely sure how to not-iffily treat these subjects in a book series that is basically a set of light-hearted goofy picaresque swashbucklers, and it could be much worse, but I still find myself giving it the side-eye and trying to read faster so we can get to the bits where people get chased by alligators and Jacky steals shit and is generally awesome. Jacky is so awesome, apparently, that she invents swimming flippers, the bathing suit, sterilizing things in alcohol, and probably some other anachronistic stuff that I don't even remember.
Jaimy is still sort of stiff and irritating; sadly, there is a bit less than usual of Higgins being awesome; a lot of crazy shit happens FOR SCIENCE, Joannie Nichols is an adorable little Jacky-in-training, and like fourteen of Jacky's old paramours show up to embarrass her.
I don't think having read the next book before this one really spoiled it at all, because it really isn't the most surprise-plot-twist-heavy book and the ending is precisely what you'd expect it to be if you're at all familiar with the series.
I am sort of running out of things to say about these books. In traditional Bloody Jack fashion, they are fabulously fun and hilarious if you read them too fast to register all of the wildly problematic bits, like (a) the increasingly weird attempted rape scenes, which are starting to get so weird that they seem to be trying to be funny, (b) all of Jacky's "charming" man-friends being pushy assholes, and (c) Jacky's amazingly selective sense of morality, which careens back and forth between being very modern (in a frequently uncomfortable, Great-White-Savior-y sort of way) and totally non-existent (when the author feels the resulting scenes will be entertaining). In this one, Jacky makes lots of sadfaces at a bullfight, then promptly sets out to become a cockfighting champion; buys a slave and sets her free and keeps her on as a proper employee; and impersonates various ethnicities. It is a bit iffy. I'm not entirely sure how to not-iffily treat these subjects in a book series that is basically a set of light-hearted goofy picaresque swashbucklers, and it could be much worse, but I still find myself giving it the side-eye and trying to read faster so we can get to the bits where people get chased by alligators and Jacky steals shit and is generally awesome. Jacky is so awesome, apparently, that she invents swimming flippers, the bathing suit, sterilizing things in alcohol, and probably some other anachronistic stuff that I don't even remember.
Jaimy is still sort of stiff and irritating; sadly, there is a bit less than usual of Higgins being awesome; a lot of crazy shit happens FOR SCIENCE, Joannie Nichols is an adorable little Jacky-in-training, and like fourteen of Jacky's old paramours show up to embarrass her.
I don't think having read the next book before this one really spoiled it at all, because it really isn't the most surprise-plot-twist-heavy book and the ending is precisely what you'd expect it to be if you're at all familiar with the series.
