The Smugglers is full on action pack. It’s a strange tale with a ship call the Dragon and a crew each with a dark past. When John Spencer father a merchant has to stay in London and entrust an old Scottish sea captain, Captain Crowe to sail the Dragon up to London. John find himself mix up in to a Smuggling run.

I didn't care much for John; he does take responsibility that the cargo gets deliver to London and see that his father fortune doesn’t go to waste. Captain Crowe and Dasher seem to have the spotlight more.
I like how it keep you guessing which characters is good or bad until the point they revile their true face.

This is a great story that can stand on its own as an island in a sea of series.

Points:

Character: 4/5

Writing: 5/5 - There nothing supernatural yet, there a strange and creepiness that surrounds the story. Giving an unsettling atmosphere.

Plot: 5/5

Total: 14/20 = 4 *stars*

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More corpses, more ships, more scares.

Miscatalogued by some public libraries as a childrens book; where YA category is available, should be YA. ( )

In nineteenth-century England, after his father buys a schooner called the Dragon, sixteen-year-old John sets out to sail it from Kent to London and becomes involved in a dangerous smuggling scheme.
Series: High seas trilogy, 2
Lexile: 640

An adventurous tale with engaging, colorful characters, The Smugglers begins with a robbery staged by a highwayman and then sets sail on the high seas with Captain Crowe, a last minute replacement for the murdered captain, Dashing Tommy Dusker, and John Spencer, the sixteen-year-old protagonist and son of the ship's owner. The schooner itself, the Dragon, began with the bloody death of an innocent one and has forever carried with it this unfavorable beginning. Though the Dragon's mission is a direct trip to London with a cargo of wool, she detours to France for a second cargo of illicit liquor and encounters drifting dead bodies, ships in pursuit of her, and malicious warnings at every turn. The story's great strength is its realistic seafaring-dialogue such as "The fog's no high enough to hide the masts. Dasher, get aloft; "Ye've got the wheel." The mysterious characters, who's good and who's evil, will keep the reader guessing. In the classroom students will simply enjoy the page-turning plot; however, the story also lends itself to teaching the historial importance of the sea and its ships to powerful nations like France and England. ( )