Casey Simpson

The first thing that can be said for this book, is that the characters are wonderful, especially the titular character, Thistle, during the middle section of the book. She is a lost and confused girl, who nevertheless is devious and very, very loveable. Another favourite are the two captains, Parma (a major character) and Dozy (a more minor character).

But while the author has written these wonderful characters well, I get the impression that the editing hasn't gone so well. There are regular mistakes in spelling and punctuation, as well as word misuse (their instead of there), which I believe needs to be looked at before this book can become widespread. There was also the single use of brackets, which personally, i find off-putting in any story.

But as I earlier mentioned, the author writes rather wonderfully, and I'll discuss the plot in a moment, but there are two devices that I think the author uses exceedingly well. The first is psychology. The descent into madness of a particular character is impressive - the author switches to her perspective regularly, and each time she is less and less composed. But the author doesn't stop there. He manages to show us how each main character has changing views of increasingly insane woman.

The other device is more commonly done well, and is the dropping of important information early in the plot. I don't want to go into detail, as not to ruin the story, but it is there.

As with almost any book. There are weak points, and the greatest weak point here was the romance. Early on, it starts well, in a scene with a drunken thistle, but then at the end it moves far too quickly. There is no real description of the getting together scene, it just happens, and no description of Thistle's feelings. Additionally, they start calling each other beloved almost instantly, and while I could maybe expect that from the man, I would imagine that thistle would be scornful.

That getting together scene is one that I would have liked to have seen. The other is the ear removal scene. Or at least before and after, as it would keep that particular character in our minds, and show more her change in position.

Finally to the plot! While at first I found that there were too many sub-plots, and that the story was too complex for it's length, they quickly tied together nicely, and the one or two remaining sub-plots were woven well with the main plot. While each of the sub-plots were interesting (and Anselme's in particular could have been the start of a completely different book, such was the impact it had), when they joined together it made Thistle's storyline much richer.

Overall then, the main downfall of the book is the grammatical and spelling errors, which really need to be looked at. Nevertheless, the story is a good one, with the odd scene that I would like to see included to ease the flow of the plot.… (altro)