Review: Daughter of the Pirate King Duology

So, I really wanted to love this duology, but I couldn't. I did like it, but it was average, and not what I wanted. This duology includes: Daughter of the Pirate King and Daughter of the Siren Queen, both by Tricia Levenseller. It's classified as: YA Fantasy Fiction

---

This duology is about pirates and sirens, if you couldn't tell by the titles. Specifically our resident half-pirate, half-siren, Alosa Kalligan. AKA the main character. She is the daughter of the Pirate King, and runs her own ship, the Ava-lee. I really did like her in the first book. She seemed fierce and she knew how to fight and charm, which is always great to see, but I think it was overdone in the second book. Like, I get that she was trained by the Pirate King and is obviously amazing at fighting and resisting, but it feels like she has a huge superiority complex, which was annoying. She's a good character, but like the rest of the book, not great.

The first book picks up when Alosa purposely gets captured by an enemy ship so that she can find part of a secret map to the Isla de Canta, which supposedly has treasure but is surrounded by dangerous sirens. Because of this, it was captivating right from the beginning, and it had a good pace throughout. One thing I didn't like was how easy everything was for her. Alosa is on a ship full of smart enemy pirates, but they let her go looking on the deck at night and make the lock on her cell so easy to pick that she can do it every night? Not to mention that they barely checked her to make sure she wasn't hiding anything.

There also should've been more action in the first book since it's a literal pirate book. Instead, it was focused on Alosa and Riden's relationship the majority of the time. Speaking of Riden, he also seems ehhh. I think more character building would've gone a long way with him, but he's a little flat in this series. The second book, at least, has much more action and less Alosa and Riden, which is better. I also think the writing style is very basic and it doesn't really attract my attention. I understand that, as this series was Levenseller's debut.

Now for a few things I actually did like. Firstly, Enwen and Kearan. Probably my favorite characters out of the whole thing. Enwen is adorable with all of his superstitions, and even though Kearan is passed out most of the time, I like him too. I wish there was more Enwen in the second book, though. That one's mostly Kearan. My favorite scene in the whole series is probably the one in Daughter of the Pirate King where Alosa taps into her siren abilities and acts innocent to seduce Draxen. Comedy gold over there. It was great. There was also plot twists in both books that weren't super surprising but were still good. They definitely added to the fact that it's an above-average book instead of just average.

Like I've been saying throughout this whole review, the Daughter of the Pirate King duology is good, but not great, and for that, I'm giving it 3.5/5 stars.