VAMPIRATES: Demons of the Ocean
by Justin Somper
Little, Brown and Company
ISBN-10: 0316014443
ISBN-13: 9780316014441
Ages 8-12
336 pages

Grace and Connor Tempest are twins living in Australia in 2505. As their story begins, Grace awakens in their lighthouse home to a raging storm. She wakes up Connor to show him the lightning and rain, and the two decide to climb into the lighthouse lamp room to join their father, who sings them a shanty about a ship full of vampirates --- ocean demons, eternally sailing.

Grace and Connor go back to bed, but before Grace drifts off to sleep, she looks out the window to see a single ship floating through the night. She doesn't know that her father, in the lamp room, is waving to the ship in welcome.

The story resumes seven years later. The twins are now 14. Their father has just died, leaving them alone in the world with no material possessions; everything will be repossessed by the bank to cover his debt.

When Grace and Connor refuse to live with the childless banker and his wife, the matron at the orphanage readies bunks for them. However, they escape both dreadful fates by sailing away on their father's boat --- directly into a horrifying storm. They try singing their father's vampirate sea shanty for comfort, but soon they're overboard.

Connor searches for Grace but cannot find her, though he glimpses an old ship sailing by. Just as he gives up, a young woman named Cheng Li rescues him, pulling him into her own boat. Cheng Li is a pirate, and she takes Connor to the pirate ship. In the midst of Connor's sorrow over Grace, he becomes convinced that the ancient galleon he'd spotted must be a vampirate ship, as in his father's sea shanty. The vampirates, Connor believes, must have rescued Grace.

Grace has indeed been rescued by an Irish boy named Lorcan. She is hidden away on his ship and forbidden to show herself to his shipmates. Food seems to appear from thin air. Grace overhears mysterious conversations about "the Feast" while Lorcan worries about Grace's well-being. But Grace is so concerned about Connor that she forgets to fear for herself --- until she glimpses a shipmate with eyes of fire and a mouth filled with blood. Meanwhile, she feels herself changing.

On Connor's pirate ship, Cheng Li appears to be intrigued by the notion of the vampirate ship. Connor is relieved to find an ally until she points out that if vampirates took Grace, they surely don't have her welfare in mind. Is she still alive? What horrible things are happening to her?

VAMPIRATES: DEMONS OF THE OCEAN is an excellent page turner. There's plenty of good humor to leaven the suspense. The main characters are three-dimensional, believable and likable. Secondary characters are quirky and fascinating; the pirate ship's Captain Wrathe keeps a pet snake in his multi-colored dreadlocks and is competitive with pirate upstart Cheng Li, who graduated from the pirate academy. The story left me with a few unanswered questions (such as "Where is the twins' mother?" and "Why is this set in 2505?"), which I expect will be answered in future installments. I eagerly anticipate reading all the books in this highly original series.

   --- Reviewed by Terry Miller Shannon (terryms2001@yahoo.com)

Click here now to buy this book from Amazon.com.

Back to top.