A special shout out to the sour-faced tortoise Enkidu, who always made me smile even while reading some of the horrors that Mayken and Gil had to cope with!

It was a complete surprise to me, I did not expect such things at all. Unfairly extremely sad. I enjoy the author's writing style; the short chapter and the story narrated by two young children make it more bitter. I will definitely try other Jess Kidd books to torture myself. The history of Mayken’s ‘Batavia’ voyage and the violent, blood-thirsty brutality of the crew are well known, making the islands a popular place for visitors to search for artefacts. This gives an opportunity for Mayken’s and Gil’s stories to parallel each other as he finds items that we know she used. Because Imke looks as if she might cry and Mayken loves her, she reaches out her hand and strokes the tops of the old woman’s missing fingers. The story is interesting and I want to know how it all wraps up but one of the narrators has really done the book a disservice. I’m not normally a huge fan of books where children are the protagonists, but I very much enjoyed this, and will be hunting down more of Jess Kidd’s books.The author makes general comparisons at first, and as she reveals more of their lives, the similarities are almost word for word.

How far can human cruelty reach? There are no limits to rage depths or even no matter what time in history it happened, not really! Mayken is the child, a young Dutch child, nine years old. Her mother has died, so she is sailing aboard the ‘Batavia’ with her nursemaid, Imke, bound for Batavia in the Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia), where her father lives. Half of the book is her story, a fictionalised account of the true voyage in 1628.The great-bellied ship looms above. One, two, three masts – rising up through a web of rope. The pennant flags snap and stream against a sky of louring clouds. An angry, powerful book seething with love and outrage for a community too often stereotyped or ignored. No. I’ll still need to be Mayken. And there are no hidden gems.” Pelgrom feels along the hem of her dress, then stops, raises an eyebrow, and bites at the stitching. Mayken grabs at the dress but Alas, despite its resplendent start, the book ran aground towards the end. The promise of dark magical realism, unimaginable wonders and a nightmarish sea monster never really materialised and the story just fizzled out like a damp squid squib. Discuss the differences and similarities between Mayken and Gil. Despite their being more than 300 years apart, what are some of their shared experiences?

Imke sniffs. “The lady is going to drink wine in the Great Cabin with the upper-merchant. The maid is to rein in her wayward bosom.” With past books, Kidd has delivered stories dripping with magical realism. The sinking of the Batavia is such an interesting story, but with this fourth book, emphasis is placed on the two protagonists’ stories, and they drive the narrative. Although the element of magical realism is reduced, the book is still full of Kidd’s beautiful descriptive prose. With the horrible, cramped, filthy conditions of a seventeenth century Dutch ship, Kidd has a wonderful canvas to work with. The other half of the book belongs to Gil, an Australian boy, also nine, sent in 1989 to live with his late mother’s father, a cray fisherman, on one of the small islands off the coast of Western Australia. He doesn’t know who his father is, and he’s unhappy with his gruff grandfather. I loved the elements of magical realism tied into the narrative through legends/folklore. People having a second sight, a stone with a hole in the middle that allows the beholder to gaze into the past or future, and best of all, a mythical creature that lives in the bilge of the boat.

The Night Ship

Rounding the ship’s flank, they see gunports painted red. The predikant points them out to the cherub. Mayken has a father she’s never met. Her father is a merchant who lives in a distant land where the midday sun is fierce enough to melt a Dutch child.We follow Mayken’s adventures on this months-long journey across the world. But we know from the beginning that the ship will not complete its trip. This story is set in two timelines, 1628 and 1989, and shares the lives of two 9 year olds, Mayken’s story set in 1628, and Gil’s in 1989.