Twice brought to hang at “Pirate’s Cove” Captain Jalen Shenn, Captain of the Free Boards Dragon Wynd, finds himself driven by a promise made twenty years before to take a figure to a place where even those who fly the black flag fear to go.

With the Empire chasing him from every friendly port, his most trusted crewman turned traitor to his boards, and the mystery of his wife’s location still plaguing him, Jalen must find the truth of why the Shenn name is so feared that they would wage war for the very mention of it.

With nothing left and no place left to turn but Deep Waters, Jalen is faced with a choice, Defy the Empire and fly the black flag, becoming the man the Empire fears him to be, or hide under the Blue flag of Freehold and never find the reason for this war that has plagued him all his life.

And when everything is on the line Jalen will make a choice that will shape history for hundreds of years to come.

My Review:

There is sooo much potential in this book. The writing is beautiful. It has a lilting musical quality to it that makes it a pleasure to read. It also makes the layered meanings of the phrases believable. I really liked the way that a single phrase or gesture could have both a surface meaning and a secondary meaning, enabling the speaker to relay two messages at once. It is a testament to Pepper that she is able to relay both meaning in an easily followable manner.

Pepper has obviously put a lot of thought into the peoples of her world. The men in this novel (there isn’t a single woman) are men of loyalty and honor-bound by strong codes of conduct. These codes, tied as they are to real spiritual consequences, are so strong that people are often willing to die for them. The problem is that these codes/beliefs/religions aren’t adequately explained to the reader. Nor is the social structure of the world or the nature of the species that people it. As an example, I’m still not certain if the ‘dragons’ are actual dragons or simply a tribe that has some special skill and claims the totem of the dragon.

As much as this novel has to offer (and it is a lot), reading it is like reading every third page of the second book in a series without having read the first. I kept flipping back to see if I had missed pages. It is roughly 120 pages long, but I think it should be closer to 320 long to accomplish its task. So much preceded the start of the book and is left unexplained at the end. It would be a pleasant 320 pages to read, though. Pepper really is a talented writer. I’d be interested in reading the rest of the books in the series, but I would be more interested in reading the rest of this one first.