Rarely has a book with such a glorious title fallen so tragically flat. The Sublime and Spirited Voyage of Original Sin tells of Pirate Captain Gayle, who abducts a seamstress, Celia. She does this because she needs someone to stitch up a wounded man, the ship’s doctor is dead, and none of the pirates can sew. Since I’m pretty sure a lot of pirates could sew quite nicely for practical reasons in real life, this is an early sign that this book is wacky even by pirate romance standards. This book is purely fun, and although the sheer volume of historical inaccuracies took me out of the story and the rapey stuff diminished the fun, other readers might have a blast with this book.

Basically, Gayle kidnaps Celia, and promises to return her home immediately. But Celia kind of likes this whole pirate thing and she agrees to a detour. Pretty soon Celia and Gayle are madly in love, but Celia isn’t sure she likes piracy so much that she never wants to settle down – she thinks of this trip as a quick adventure. As the adventure goes on, Celia learns how to drink rum, give and receive oral sex, and swordfight. I know people who had a similar learning experience in college (I should have gone out more). They also pick up another woman who is also a pirate, a timid doctor who wants to save his sister, and the sister in question, while they fight bad guys and hunt for treasure.

I don’t need very much historical accuracy in my pirate romances. In fact, I feel that a certain level of inaccuracy is absolutely required. I don’t want the hero to be a thief and a murderer. I like the pirates to smell nice and have good teeth, especially if there’s kissing involved. I adore it when the captain serves his or her lady fair a sumptuous dinner of tropical delicacies instead of hard tack and maggoty goop. But evidentially even I have standards when it comes to historical accuracy in pirate romance, and this book just pushed things too far for me. Gayle seems to have no knowledge of any other female pirates, but there were quite a few who sailed openly (the most famous Western examples are Anne Bonny and Mary Read). I’m no expert on sailing, but it seems unlikely to me that a competent captain would spend a serious storm having sex in her cabin instead of giving orders on deck. I’ve already mentioned the “men can’t sew” thing, which is absolutely ludicrous – someone on the crew had to know how to mend sails and doubtless any pirate could sew a patch onto something.

A more serious problem is that rape is a huge part of the story. We see one attempted rape and it’s horribly disturbing to me because it happens to the only unsympathetic female character. The new doctor was trying to rescue his sister, Anne, who was mistaken for a prostitute when she was visiting a brothel. Anne tries to seduce Gayle and there’s considerable slut shaming. Prior to the very graphic rape attempt, she evades being raped by pirates by performing sex acts with other women, which, since she does it under duress, I’d argue is just more rape. When rape isn’t shown, it’s referred to – Gayle orders her crew not to rape Celia, and everyone Gayle fights is known to be a rapist. As far as I can tell, this story was intended as a fun romp, and for me, all the references to rape were not fun.

The rest of the story is feather-light. None of the characters is very well rounded. Celia spends most of her time on the ship in Gayle’s cabin to avoid harassment by the crew, so daily life is barely described. There’s no sense that we, the readers, are being transported to another place and time. The only places given much description are the taverns. 

My biggest problems with the book were the rape references, the “everyone we attack is bad” pattern, and the fact that even for a fun fantasy, this book had no relationship to how anything worked in the actual world. However, I adore the title and the concept. If you have a high disbelief threshold, and you can tolerate a lot of mentions of rape, you might like this book more than I did. The romance is fun, Celia’s evolution into a pirate is extremely enjoyable, and there are some very funny moments as well as some extremely creative cursing. Frankly, I found the book well worth the $6.94 I paid for a used copy just because of the phrase, “God’s Bunghole!” You have to respect that kind of creativity.

If you are going to try the book at all, try it when you are sick, or when you are on the beach – sometime when your brain is already turned off. But honestly, as much as I loved the concept of lesbian pirates, this book just made me want to re-read The Windflower instead.