Monday, May 30, 2011

Steel by Carrie Vaughn

Steel
by Carrie Vaughn

Published: 2011
Publisher: HarperTeen
Genre: Action, Coming of Age, Time Travel, YA
Hardback: 304 pages
Rating: 4

Description from the amazon:
It was a slender length of rusted steel, tapered to a point at one end and jagged at the other, as if it had broken. A thousand people would step over it and think it trash, but not her.

This was the tip of a rapier.


Sixteen-year-old Jill has fought in dozens of fencing tournaments, but she has never held a sharpened blade. When she finds a corroded sword piece on a Caribbean beach, she is instantly intrigued and pockets it as her own personal treasure.

The broken tip holds secrets, though, and it transports Jill through time to the deck of a pirate ship. Stranded in the past and surrounded by strangers, she is forced to sign on as crew. But a pirate's life is bloody and brief, and as Jill learns about the dark magic that brought her there, she forms a desperate scheme to get home—one that risks everything in a duel to the death with a villainous pirate captain.

Time travel, swordplay, and romance combine in an original high-seas adventure from New York Times bestseller Carrie Vaughn.

My two-bits:
In-a-word(s): en garde
I enjoyed this swashbuckling tale with references to the art of fencing.

The pirates the heroine encounters are tame compared to the rough and tumble ones we imagine. So, you will get a light taste of pirate life and sailing. Still though, much action and revenge thrown in.

Read this to meet a pirate queen - Captain Marjory Cooper of the Diana.

fyi: I submitted a Steel haiku to Bibliognome for a contest entry:

pirates and captain
i be swashbuckling
to saves me life dear


~*~

* part of Women Wielding Blades event

* also part of ...and a bottle o'rum event

 
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