Wednesday 25 September 2024

Book Review: The Vengeance by Emma Newman (Historical Fantasy)

The Vengeance
Emma Newman
Solaris
6 May 2025
384
eBook - EPUB
Historical Fantasy
ARC via NetGalley

Morgane grew up at sea, daughter of the fierce pirate captain of the Vengeance, raised to follow in her footsteps as scourge of the Four Chains Trading Company. But when Anna-Marie is mortally wounded in battle, she confesses to Morgane that she is not her mother.

The captain of the enemy ship reveals he was paid to kill Anna-Marie and bring Morgane home to France and her real family. Desperate to learn the truth about her lineage, Morgane spares him, leaving the Vengeance and everything she knows behind.

Her quest reveals a world of decadence and darkness, in which monsters vie for control of royal courts and destinies of nations. She discovers the bloody secrets of the Four Chains Trading Company, and the truth about her real mother’s death, nearly twenty years before...

 

The Vengeance had an awesome premise but overall the book didn't really come together for me. To start with the positives, the early part of the book with all the pirate ship stuff was great and clearly well researched. Had this just been a swashbuckling pirate tale, I think it could have worked well. Where it fell apart was in the latter chapters once Morgane left the ship to seek her mother in France. The introduction of the vampires came far too late to have an impact -- it just felt tacked on -- and I struggled to accept Morgane's fighting ability when she came up against vampires for the first time. The other aspects where this book didn't work for me were the dialogue, which felt really forced, the pacing, which was slow at the start but then rushed at the end, and the romance, which felt too sudden to be believable. It looks like this book is intended to begin a series; however everything felt wrapped up (however swiftly) by the end of the this volume, so there was nothing that made me interested to read on. In conclusion, I am giving this book 3 stars. It's worth a look for the fun pirate stuff at the start, but I feel the inclusion of the vampire element was misguided (and you'll feel let down if you read this expecting a vampire story) and the book could have done with more editing on pacing and dialogue.

I received this book as a free eBook ARC via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. 

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