This is the first book in what seems to be a rather popular series of semi-historical children’s novels. There are five out so far, which means that yet again I was a bit late to jump on the bandwagon, but I think I’ll survive it. Meyer’s apparently published a couple picture books, but Bloody Jack was his first novel. Oh, and yes, L. A. Meyer is male.

Mary Faber is an orphan on the streets of London circa 1800. She’s about twelve or thirteen, and she can read, because her father was a schoolteacher. That makes her useful to her gang, but when the leader dies, she decides to disguise herself as a boy named Jacky and go to sea. Once at sea, living in such close quarters with all the other males, can she keep her secret? On top of that, can she ever make it to midshipman?

OK, I admit it: I’m a sucker for cross-dressing stories — specifically ones in which a female disguises herself as a male in order to do something she’s perfectly capable of doing, but that she’s not allowed to do by society. I blame it on Tamora Pierce and the Alanna books. I realize these books vary in quality and that the majority of them are nowhere near as good as Alanna: the First Adventure, but I always hope.

Bloody Jack I enjoyed, but I’d like to throw out a handful of caveats before I recommend it. First, it’s not a pirate book. With the recent popularity of pirates in the fictional media, pirate books seem to be all over the place, but Jacky is a ship’s boy for the British Navy. They meet a ship full of pirates once or twice, yes, but Jacky herself is not a pirate. Those who go in to this volume expecting pirates will find orphans and midshipmen, not pirates.

Second, the book is written in dialect: specifically lower-class London (well, probably generic British) dialect. Since Jacky is a first-person narrator, that means that the dialogue AND the narration is written in dialect. While her speech does improve a lot about fifty pages into the book, the majority of the dialogue is still in dialect. I know this bothers a lot of people (including Ben), and it’s never difficult to understand, but the warning still exists. I’ll even go so far as to say it’s only sort of dialect, in that it’s mostly lack of subject-verb agreement, the substitution of the word ‘what’ in strange places, and using an apostrophe instead of a ‘g’ at the end of almost all ‘-ing’ words. Meyer doesn’t use ‘Oi’ instead of the first-person subjective singular, for example.

Third, there’s a scene with a kite that I just don’t buy. I really didn’t. If one approaches the story with the idea that it’s a tall tale (not a fantasy novel, as those usually have more internal logic), then the scene makes sense, but as I read it, I raised a metaphorical eyebrow.

I have no idea regarding the accuracy of the stuff with the ships. I don’t know much of anything about boats or ships or nautical miles, but nothing was jarringly erroneous. (”The boat was made out of pernambuco . . .”) The historical accuracy seemed fine to me, but the book did nothing more than skim the surface of most historical events.

Anyway, the story was vastly entertaining, as Jacky herself is vastly entertaining, and it was a fairly quick read. For those who like boats, the British Navy, and girls dressing as boys to subvert the dominant paradigm, this volume comes highly recommended. I’d avoid it if you are annoyed by dialect, though. 4/5 stars.