Celia Rees's "Pirates!" is a gripping read from page one: It gains on you like Blackbeard's fearsome pirate ships, takes you hostage, and holds you without mercy till the last page. Her story of two young women taking to a life at sea as pirates is so engaging, it carries you forward as effortlessly as the slickest Hollywood flick, and lasts for a delicious while longer.
There is nothing farther from the world of Nancy Kington, daughter of a Bristol merchant and heiress to a Jamaican sugar plantation, than the world of her attendant, Minerva Sharpe, born to an African mother and destined to be nothing more than a slave.
"Pirates!" is set in the days of slavery, when the high seas were full of ships ferrying African men, women and children to white shores and a life of endless toil. This is also the fag end of what is known as the "golden age of piracy," when a black flag emblazoned with skull and crossbones could strike terror in the bravest of hearts.