Pirates! The True and Remarkable Adventures of Minerva Sharpe and Nancy Kington, Female Pirates

Pirates! is a much darker story than Piratica. The main female characters of Pirates! seem more like victims and yet they are somehow more real than the colourful Piratica. Nancy Kington is the only daughter of a wealthy merchant; she runs free and wild and is spoiled by her father and brothers.

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When times get hard and the family business is in jeapardy, her father remarries, his new wife is determined to make Nancy into a woman of quality. Nancy has her own ideas of who she should marry and what her future will be. Several people try to tell her how unrealistic those dreams are but she is resistant to their clarity.

More troubles come on the family and Nancy finds herself promised to marry a rich and scary man who used to be a pirate. She also learns how much of her family fortune is dependant on the slave trade and she is upset. Nancy still can't bring herself to settle down or accept her engagemnt and when she murders an evil man (on the same night that she kills a man to release him from torture) she flees with a family slave into the mountains of Jamaica. Fleeing from her abusive fiancee, Nancy and Minerva join a pirate band. These are not the gentle pirates of Piratica although the crew does not kill often since it is a waste and they do stick by their rules. They are ruthless in their dedication to their goals and some are more bloodthirsty than others. None can compare to the treachery, dedication, and blood lust of the jilted fiancee. Nancy can feel him chasing her through her dreams.

Along the journeys, Nancy finds the restrictions on her gender everpresent and sometimes oppressive. She and Minerva work hard to dispel the stereotypes of the time and yet sometimes do fall within those lines.

In the end, Nancy heads back to a more demure and ladylike life but she is doing so on her own terms. After all, it isn't that she objected to marriage in general.

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Following the death of her merchant father, 14 year old Nancy Kington learns of his plans for her to leave England and take up residence on the family's Jamaican plantation. What she doesn't know until she arrives is that he also arranged a marriage with a rich, but cruel neighbor in order to save

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the family from financial ruin. Her older brother, Joel, intends to force the marriage for his own selfish gains. Unwilling to enter into a matrimonial relationship with a man she despises, Nancy flees with her house slave, Minerva, who has nightmares of her own to escape. In order to leave the island, the two girls join up with a band of pirates on board the ship Deliverance and live a life of nautical adventure and romance!

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I do enjoy this book quite a bit. It's very suspenseful and I love the detail at the manor, though quite gruesome. Satisfies a bit of the pirate in all of us!

What a great adventure story! One that's sure to appeal to both teen boys and girls. Nancy Kington, a young woman, disguises herself as a pirate and joins a band of pirates after escaping the sleazy Jamaican plantation owner who she was supposed to marry.

Nancy and Minerva get swept into the piratical life by chance, and face adventure at sea. The characters are typical pirate personalities, and it is interesting to watch the girls grow and change as they adjust to their new environment. The setting and plot are quite accurate as to the whereabouts

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and activities of pirates during that time period. The theme is constantly repeated throughout the book, being that you shouldn't be afraid of the future but live for today, and this still is true today. The style is very descriptive of pirate life and uses all those words concerning ships that so many are not familiar with, but the storyline and events almost seem too stereotypical of a pirate story, like she got her ideas from "Pirates of the Caribbean". Overall, it is an interesting story, but not unique enough to be guaranteed a spot in my collection.

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I loved the book.It sparked my interest right off from the start.It only got better and better and I couldn't wait to get done reading to find out what heooens.The way it is told by narrator iI couldn't wait to see what happens to her.

Fabulous! These aren't your average pirates!

You definatly have to be patient with this one, but it is so worth it. It took me a few time to gain the patients to read it through, but once I did I went right back to the beginning and started over. Worth every bit of waiting. Celia Rees has a lot to offer us readers!!!

I picked up this book because I had be seeing it on shelves for ages and was curious. It ended up being a pretty darn good book.

This book tells the story of a young girl, Nancy, who is the daughter to a sugar plantation owner. When Nancy's father dies. Nancy is spirited away by her brothers to live

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on their sugar plantation in Jamaica. Upon her arrival she finds that she has been promised to a horrible man for marriage. Certain circumstances come about and Nancy ends up fleeing for her life and signing up to be serve as a pirate on a pirate ship. The majority of the book is spent on her adventures.

This was a very good book. The writing style is very straight forward, the whole book is from Nancy's perspective. The plot moves slowly at the beginning with the the first third of the book telling about how Nancy and Minerva got onto the pirate ship. The pace picks up from there and hurtles from adventure to adventure. It was a thoroughly enjoyable read.

I have one small complaint about the book and that was that it dealt with pirates from a very romantic point of view; the violence of a pirate's lifestyle is somewhat muted. I think young girls would have been hard pressed to serve as women on a pirate ship in reality. Of course, this isn't reality, it's just a very good story that definitely sways toward fantasy. It reminded me a lot of the Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It is a very solid young adult novel.

I liked the book and will be checking out more books by this author.

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An action-packed, girl-power story of adventure on the high seas. Nancy, the daughter of a wealthy sugar-plantation owner, finds her comfortable world turned upside-down after her father dies. Sent to Jamaica and set to be traded in marriage to a cruel and devious landowner to profit her stepmother

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and brothers, Nancy looks for an escape--and finds it on the pirate ship Deliverance. What follows is a year of adventure, great fortune, a little romance, and a lot of danger.

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Nancy has been promised in marriage to a cruel older man in order to save the family business. It's 1820, and she runs away to become a pirate, but he has vowed to catch her.

5 stars! I think this book had alot of detail in it. Or at least enough so that I felt like I was aboard with them! It was really different than I expected it to be! I can't wait to read this book again!

"I was of a roving frame of mind, even as a child, and for years my fancy had been to set sail on one of my father's ships. One grey summer morning, in 1722, my wish was granted, but not quite in the way that I would have wanted."
So begins Pirates by Cecilia Rees. Though sixteen-year-old Nancy

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Kington is dressed up like a doll and drilled in the ladylike arts, her heart cries out for more adventure than an eligible match. When misfortune devastates the family fortune, Nancy’s brothers attempt to use her as a bargaining chip. But, Nancy is no fool. She taught herself how to read and write, and she is determined to teach herself how to survive independently—even if it means turning to a life of Piracy!
This historical novel opens in 1722 coastal England. Nancy is horrified to discover that her family fortune is derived not just from a sugar plantation in Jamaica, but from slave trade. Consequently, freedom is explored through the perspective of multiple characters. Nancy and her fearless friend Minerva, are not content to live lives of luxury built on the broken backs of others. They risk everything to escape and make for the high seas. Beautifully worded descriptions and spicy dialogue practically allow readers to taste the salty tang in the air. Nancy and Minerva find adventure sailing from confederacy ports, to tropical climes, and through harrowing storms in the company of daring and dangerous characters. In pursuit of plunder, they quickly learn that the greatest treasures—love and friendship-- come from the heart.

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Nancy Kington is the daughter of a rich merchant. Nancy’s mother died during childbirth, so she is raised by her father. Nancy suddenly finds herself orphaned when her father dies suddenly. Nancy is sent to live on her family's plantation in Jamaica. Nancy is very outdone by her brother who tries

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to marry her off to a man she cannot stand. Nancy also hates the way the overseer treats the slaves. Due to a horrible shooting, Nancy and one of the slaves, Minerva, run away and join a band of pirates. This is the only way for both of them to be free from their horrible future.

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This is a YA historical fiction about two young woman, one an heiress to a shipping and a Jamaican sugar plantation fortune, and her former slave who became pirates together as a way to avoid their proscribed destinies.

Although there were some faults in the writing/editing, this book was so

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adventurous and fun that I really didn't mind at all.

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This book is about as girl-power as it gets. Nancy Kington's father has made his fortune by growing sugar cane and shipping it all over for trade. She never thought much about it (although she objects to the way her brothers treat the slaves in her family's employment) until a devastating storm

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destroys most of her family's fleet and her father dies soon afterward. She finds herself on a boat bound for the island where the sugar cane is grown, and she eventually learns that her father and brothers have pledged her in marriage to an evil Brazilian with a neighboring plantation. To escape her unpleasant fate, she takes her slave Minerva and runs off with pirates, all the while hoping that her true love, the hopelessly middle-class William, will still love her as a pirate. To its credit, the story doesn't linger on the star-crossed lovers bit. Instead, it detail just how bada** Nancy and Minerva become.

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Piracy, shipwrecks, mutiny, swordfights, duels!

And yet it was somehow still really dull. This never leapt off the page (well, CD, I guess; it was an audio) at me. I listened dutifully to the end, but I'm not super-inclined to pick up any of her other books.

started well, got worse and worse

Awesome girl pirate book. Both my daughter and I love this one.

Audiobook.

I enjoyed this quite a lot -- there were sections so gripping I had to sit in the car to finish the scene. I particularly loved the depiction of the strong and lasting friendship between Nancy and Minerva.

It was interesting to see how the author handled the embrace of a piratical life by

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the various characters. I would have liked to see both Nancy and Minerva question the morality of their actions a bit more. I could certainly sympathize with both of them (especially Minerva, a former slave) feeling that the piratical life was the only one that could afford them freedom, but I did feel as if some of the ethical questions were glossed over more than I would have liked.

But overall it was an entertaining and very atmospheric tale of high adventure that I quite enjoyed listening to!

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This was a fun historical novel describing the events surrounding the pirates of the Caribbean. Nancy is a wealthy business owner's daughter who is sold in marriage when her father died. This novel gives excellent descriptions of the role of women and slaves in the 18th century. There are excellent

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descriptions of the code of pirates, mutinies, and battles. I particularly like how Rees ended the novel. There was not a true happy ending" for Nancy but there was hope for one. It made the story feel more real."

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Excellent and intriguing. Rees' characters are alive and detailed. Great adventure ! Female pirates caught in rare circumstances surrounding the history of the times.

A most interesting book.

Rather disappointing, given how much I enjoyed her other books. The pacing is all over the place and the plot comes across as wimpy.