The Vengeance by Emma Newman
May. 12th, 2025 05:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
Venture into the world of Alexandre Dumas as you’ve never seen it before, where pirates rule the high seas and vampires lurk on land …
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 Morgan 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 view 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 …
It’s the late 17th century.
19-year-old Morgane lives with her mother, Anna-Marie, the captain of the pirate ship The Vengeance. Morgane is not close to Anna-Marie, who is known for her particular hatred of ships belonging to France’s Four Chains Trading Company, making sure to target them whenever she comes across one. So when The Vengeance spies a Four Chains ship called The Maitre, Anna-Marie gives the order to engage even though Morgane thinks that something about it doesn’t look right. Sure enough, although The Vengeance’s crew quickly takes the ship, it turns out to be a trap and her mother is shot when she goes to inspect below decks.
Although Jean-Pierre (The Vengeance’s surgeon) does his best to save Anna-Marie’s life, the injury is a mortal one. Before she dies, Anna-Marie admits to Morgane that she is not her mother; she is her aunt: Anna-Marie took Morgane from her sister as a baby. After her death, Morgane discovers that each ship belonging to the Four Chains Trading Company carry a chest containing magnificent dresses and 2 letters - one addressed to Anna-Marie and one to Morgane. Each letter is from Morgane’s mother, asking her sister to come and rescue her and Morgane to come and find her.
With The Vengeance’s crew voting for a new captain and quartermaster, Morgane decides that she must go in search of her mother and accepts an offer from The Maitre’s captain to take her to France. But having spent her life at sea, Morgane is unfamiliar with the habits and expectations of land-loving society and perplexed with the notion of having to wear cumbersome dresses rather than shirts and trousers. Worse, on arriving in Nantes, she discovers that it is not only her mother who has been searching for her and there are those who want to seize her for their own ends.
But what Morgane lacks in social refinement and ladylike behaviour, she makes up for with the ability to throw a punch and stand her ground. She will need all her courage and ingenuity as she seeks to uncover the truth underlying the Four Chains Trading Company and what really happened between her aunt and mother 20 years earlier …
Emma Newman’s fantasy novel (the first in a trilogy) is a sapphic romp featuring vampires, werewolves and pirates but while there’s fun to be had with Morgane’s ignorance of social mores and colourful swearing, Morgane is one of those annoying characters who doesn’t ask questions and rushes into things without thinking. The plot is uneven, the antagonist two-dimensional and Lisette an insipid love interest whose introduction comes too late.
I picked this up because I had previously read Newman’s SPLIT WORLDS TRILOGY, which displayed a lot of imagination and investigated the social and political elements of a faery world and so was interested to see what she would bring to her combination of the vampire and pirate genres.
To start with the good, Newman has done research into 17th century piracy and has a lot of fun in establishing the workings of The Vengeance, including how the crew split booty and make decisions. She also has fun with Morgane’s attempts to come to terms with the expectations placed on 17th century women in France and I did enjoy her swearing, which is both creative and evocative.
I just wished that the plot and the characterisation had the same level of development and thought. My biggest issue with the book is that for all Morgane’s act-first-ask-questions-later attitude, she never really convinced me as a character. For starters her impetuousness is used as a means of avoiding dealing with complicated plot points, e.g. she neglects to ask the man purporting to be her father any questions about his background until it is literally too late, makes no attempt to find out background on the places and people she is visiting and all in all displays no shrewdness or any signs of having learned caution from Anna-Marie. This simply didn’t ring true to me given the world in which Morgane has been operating - I kept expecting some degree of caution, even if it’s only a matter of her learning from past mistakes rather than repeating them time and again.
This is coupled with the fact that the plot is very unevenly paced. This is particularly problematic in the final quarter when Newman rushes through key reveals about Morgane’s mother and what happened between her and Anna-Marie, all of which means it lacks any kind of emotional impact. It also means that some strands just go unexplained, e.g. why loup-garou were sent after her and for what purpose (although this may well be a strange that crops up in subsequent books).
The sapphic love story between Morgane and Lisette is rushed and I would have liked some sort of questioning of what they are doing, if not on Morgane’s side then definitely on Lisette’s if only because this would have given her some depth as a character. As it is, Lisette comes across very insipidly, defined literally as a love interest whose job is to educate Morgane on how to act in society.
All in all the result was - for me - an unsatisfying read that struggled to hold my interest and as a result, I’m not particularly interested in reading the sequel.
The Verdict:
Emma Newman’s fantasy novel (the first in a trilogy) is a sapphic romp featuring vampires, werewolves and pirates but while there’s fun to be had with Morgane’s ignorance of social mores and colourful swearing, Morgane is one of those annoying characters who doesn’t ask questions and rushes into things without thinking. The plot is uneven, the antagonist two-dimensional and Lisette an insipid love interest whose introduction comes too late.
THE VENGEANCE was released in the United Kingdom on 8 May 2025 and in the United States in 6 May 2025. Thanks to Solaris Books for the review copy of this book.
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 Morgan 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 view 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 …
It’s the late 17th century.
19-year-old Morgane lives with her mother, Anna-Marie, the captain of the pirate ship The Vengeance. Morgane is not close to Anna-Marie, who is known for her particular hatred of ships belonging to France’s Four Chains Trading Company, making sure to target them whenever she comes across one. So when The Vengeance spies a Four Chains ship called The Maitre, Anna-Marie gives the order to engage even though Morgane thinks that something about it doesn’t look right. Sure enough, although The Vengeance’s crew quickly takes the ship, it turns out to be a trap and her mother is shot when she goes to inspect below decks.
Although Jean-Pierre (The Vengeance’s surgeon) does his best to save Anna-Marie’s life, the injury is a mortal one. Before she dies, Anna-Marie admits to Morgane that she is not her mother; she is her aunt: Anna-Marie took Morgane from her sister as a baby. After her death, Morgane discovers that each ship belonging to the Four Chains Trading Company carry a chest containing magnificent dresses and 2 letters - one addressed to Anna-Marie and one to Morgane. Each letter is from Morgane’s mother, asking her sister to come and rescue her and Morgane to come and find her.
With The Vengeance’s crew voting for a new captain and quartermaster, Morgane decides that she must go in search of her mother and accepts an offer from The Maitre’s captain to take her to France. But having spent her life at sea, Morgane is unfamiliar with the habits and expectations of land-loving society and perplexed with the notion of having to wear cumbersome dresses rather than shirts and trousers. Worse, on arriving in Nantes, she discovers that it is not only her mother who has been searching for her and there are those who want to seize her for their own ends.
But what Morgane lacks in social refinement and ladylike behaviour, she makes up for with the ability to throw a punch and stand her ground. She will need all her courage and ingenuity as she seeks to uncover the truth underlying the Four Chains Trading Company and what really happened between her aunt and mother 20 years earlier …
Emma Newman’s fantasy novel (the first in a trilogy) is a sapphic romp featuring vampires, werewolves and pirates but while there’s fun to be had with Morgane’s ignorance of social mores and colourful swearing, Morgane is one of those annoying characters who doesn’t ask questions and rushes into things without thinking. The plot is uneven, the antagonist two-dimensional and Lisette an insipid love interest whose introduction comes too late.
I picked this up because I had previously read Newman’s SPLIT WORLDS TRILOGY, which displayed a lot of imagination and investigated the social and political elements of a faery world and so was interested to see what she would bring to her combination of the vampire and pirate genres.
To start with the good, Newman has done research into 17th century piracy and has a lot of fun in establishing the workings of The Vengeance, including how the crew split booty and make decisions. She also has fun with Morgane’s attempts to come to terms with the expectations placed on 17th century women in France and I did enjoy her swearing, which is both creative and evocative.
I just wished that the plot and the characterisation had the same level of development and thought. My biggest issue with the book is that for all Morgane’s act-first-ask-questions-later attitude, she never really convinced me as a character. For starters her impetuousness is used as a means of avoiding dealing with complicated plot points, e.g. she neglects to ask the man purporting to be her father any questions about his background until it is literally too late, makes no attempt to find out background on the places and people she is visiting and all in all displays no shrewdness or any signs of having learned caution from Anna-Marie. This simply didn’t ring true to me given the world in which Morgane has been operating - I kept expecting some degree of caution, even if it’s only a matter of her learning from past mistakes rather than repeating them time and again.
This is coupled with the fact that the plot is very unevenly paced. This is particularly problematic in the final quarter when Newman rushes through key reveals about Morgane’s mother and what happened between her and Anna-Marie, all of which means it lacks any kind of emotional impact. It also means that some strands just go unexplained, e.g. why loup-garou were sent after her and for what purpose (although this may well be a strange that crops up in subsequent books).
The sapphic love story between Morgane and Lisette is rushed and I would have liked some sort of questioning of what they are doing, if not on Morgane’s side then definitely on Lisette’s if only because this would have given her some depth as a character. As it is, Lisette comes across very insipidly, defined literally as a love interest whose job is to educate Morgane on how to act in society.
All in all the result was - for me - an unsatisfying read that struggled to hold my interest and as a result, I’m not particularly interested in reading the sequel.
The Verdict:
Emma Newman’s fantasy novel (the first in a trilogy) is a sapphic romp featuring vampires, werewolves and pirates but while there’s fun to be had with Morgane’s ignorance of social mores and colourful swearing, Morgane is one of those annoying characters who doesn’t ask questions and rushes into things without thinking. The plot is uneven, the antagonist two-dimensional and Lisette an insipid love interest whose introduction comes too late.
THE VENGEANCE was released in the United Kingdom on 8 May 2025 and in the United States in 6 May 2025. Thanks to Solaris Books for the review copy of this book.
