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| Farrar, Straus, and Giroux |
Eli Brown
2013
The Summary
"In Cinnamon and Gunpowder, the prizewinning author Eli Brown serves up the audacious tale of a fiery pirate captain, her reluctant chef, and their adventures aboard a battered vessel, the Flying Rose. As these unlikely shipmates traverse the oceans, intrigue, betrayal, and bloodshed churn the waters.
"The year is 1819, and Owen Wedgwood, famed as the Caesar of Sauces, has been kidnapped by the ruthless captain Mad Hannah Mabbot. After using her jade-handled pistols on his employer, lord of the booming tea trade, Mabbot announces to the terrified cook that he will be spared only as long as he puts an exquisite meal in front of her every Sunday without fail.
"To appease the red-haired tyrant, Wedgwood works wonders with the meager supplies he finds on board, including weevil-infested cornmeal and salted meat he suspects was once a horse. His first triumph is that rarest of luxuries on a pirate ship: real bread, made from a sourdough starter that he keeps safe in a tin under his shirt. Soon he's making tea-smoked eel and brewing pineapple-banana cider.
"Even as she holds him hostage, Mabbot exerts a curious draw on the chef; he senses a softness behind the swagger and the roar. Stalked by a deadly privateer, plagued by a hidden saboteur, and outnumbered in epic clashes with England's greatest ships of the line, Captain Mabbot pushes her crew past exhaustion in her hunt for the notorious King of Thieves. As Wedgwood begins to understand the method to Mabbot's madness, he must rely on the bizarre crew members he once feared: Mr. Apples, the fearsome giant who loves to knit; Feng and Bai, martial arts masters sworn to defend their captain; and Joshua, the strangely mute cabin boy.
"A giddy, archaic tale of love and appetite, Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a wildly original feat of the imagination, deep and startling as the sea itself."
The Good
Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a strangely compelling novel, yet I'm still not sure what to make of it. It's a long, winding odyssey that takes our narrator to the edges of the empire and nearly drags him to the depths of the sea. Like Odysseus, Owen Wedgwood's journey leads him across oceans and into the dens of monsters--and you can think of Mabbot as Calypso.
Alluring and wild, Mabbot is as dangerous and capricious as the sea. She's just as liable to like you as shoot you, and yet she has a strange moral compass that leads her to punish slavers, opium peddlers, murderers and anyone who crosses her. She is, as Wedgwood accuses, a red-haired tyrant, but she's not unduly cruel. She's a strange amalgamation of opposites, which makes her oddly likable.
Like Wedgwood, I didn't know what to make of her. I mean, is she a villain or is she a hero? Neither, I suppose. She's just a woman who has been tempered by the sea and shaped by the unkindness she's endured. She's human and she's desperately flawed, which makes her compelling--and a bit hard to stomach.
Altogether, Cinnamon and Gunpowder is an intriguing if unusual novel. It's an adventure story, but it's quite unlike what I've read in the past, especially regarding pirates. Sure, I had a taste with Pirates! by Celia Rees, as well as the Wave Walkers series by Kai Meyer and Vampirates by Justin Somper. But those are so mild in comparison to Eli Brown's novel, which is weighed down by tragedy and riddled with the cruel truths of reality.
Cinnamon and Gunpowder belongs in a class of its own, truly.
Cinnamon and Gunpowder is a strangely compelling novel, yet I'm still not sure what to make of it. It's a long, winding odyssey that takes our narrator to the edges of the empire and nearly drags him to the depths of the sea. Like Odysseus, Owen Wedgwood's journey leads him across oceans and into the dens of monsters--and you can think of Mabbot as Calypso.
Alluring and wild, Mabbot is as dangerous and capricious as the sea. She's just as liable to like you as shoot you, and yet she has a strange moral compass that leads her to punish slavers, opium peddlers, murderers and anyone who crosses her. She is, as Wedgwood accuses, a red-haired tyrant, but she's not unduly cruel. She's a strange amalgamation of opposites, which makes her oddly likable.
Like Wedgwood, I didn't know what to make of her. I mean, is she a villain or is she a hero? Neither, I suppose. She's just a woman who has been tempered by the sea and shaped by the unkindness she's endured. She's human and she's desperately flawed, which makes her compelling--and a bit hard to stomach.
Altogether, Cinnamon and Gunpowder is an intriguing if unusual novel. It's an adventure story, but it's quite unlike what I've read in the past, especially regarding pirates. Sure, I had a taste with Pirates! by Celia Rees, as well as the Wave Walkers series by Kai Meyer and Vampirates by Justin Somper. But those are so mild in comparison to Eli Brown's novel, which is weighed down by tragedy and riddled with the cruel truths of reality.
Cinnamon and Gunpowder belongs in a class of its own, truly.
The Bad
This is not a novel to go into with the expectation of identifying a hero. Like Wedgwood, we discover that humanity is deeply flawed--that we cannot look upon the world with only one version of right or wrong. There is no black and white, merely the anticipation of survival.
This is not a novel to go into with the expectation of identifying a hero. Like Wedgwood, we discover that humanity is deeply flawed--that we cannot look upon the world with only one version of right or wrong. There is no black and white, merely the anticipation of survival.
The Ugly
Death. Destruction. Carnage.
(You get the idea.)
Piracy is an occupation that's neither gentle nor gentlemanly. It can be cruel and completely tragic.
Besides which, I can't say I was enchanted with Wedgwood's unusual concoctions. The pineapple-banana cider sounds pretty delicious, but I can't say the cooked eel, among other things, sounded particularly appetizing.
Death. Destruction. Carnage.
(You get the idea.)
Piracy is an occupation that's neither gentle nor gentlemanly. It can be cruel and completely tragic.
Besides which, I can't say I was enchanted with Wedgwood's unusual concoctions. The pineapple-banana cider sounds pretty delicious, but I can't say the cooked eel, among other things, sounded particularly appetizing.
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