The story follows two children, Mayken and Gil, who live in two different times, 1629 and 1989. Mayken is aboard Batavia as she journeys to live with her father she has never met and Gil is relocated to a remote island to live with his grandfather after the death of his mother. This is based on a true story of the shipwrecked Batavia.
At first, I found this quite difficult to get into, there are many new words or phrases that I had to look up and I found myself confused easily but once I got to about 80 pages in, I settled more into the storyline and characters. There are many characters within the story, both of Mayken’s time and Gil’s. They all have their own part to play in the story. I found I was my drawn to Gil’s story than Mayken’s as Gil’s story seemed to tie together much overall even though both storylines are covered alternately chapter by chapter. The descriptions and accounts of the goings on during Batavia’s sailing are very well written, both disturbing and grim, and really give you an insight to the conditions on board those ships during the time period. I’ve given the book 4 stars as I hoped there would be much more of a connection between the characters than there was.
An atmospheric, cleverly composed story encapsulating true historical events, folklore and drama!
At first, I found this quite difficult to get into, there are many new words or phrases that I had to look up and I found myself confused easily but once I got to about 80 pages in, I settled more into the storyline and characters. There are many characters within the story, both of Mayken’s time and Gil’s. They all have their own part to play in the story. I found I was my drawn to Gil’s story than Mayken’s as Gil’s story seemed to tie together much overall even though both storylines are covered alternately chapter by chapter. The descriptions and accounts of the goings on during Batavia’s sailing are very well written, both disturbing and grim, and really give you an insight to the conditions on board those ships during the time period. I’ve given the book 4 stars as I hoped there would be much more of a connection between the characters than there was.
An atmospheric, cleverly composed story encapsulating true historical events, folklore and drama!