In a Nutshell: I enjoy historical fiction. I enjoy fantastical elements. I enjoy stories with strong child characters. I enjoy dual timelines. I enjoy fiction based on facts. BUT I did NOT enjoy this book. Go figure!

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Plot Preview:

1629. Nine-year-old Mayken, newly orphaned, is sailing along with her nurse maid to the Dutch East Indies. Their vessel is the magnificent Batavia, one of the greatest ships of the Dutch trading fleet. Mayken is unlike typical girls of her era, with her unbridled curiosity and her propensity for misadventure. She spends her time roaming the ship’s underdecks and searching for a mythical monster, not realising that there is no monster worse than humankind.
1989. Nine-year-old Gil, newly orphaned, is sent off to live with his grandfather off the coast of Western Australia, on a small fishing island. When he discovers the story of a shipwreck and hears of a young girl’s ghost roaming the isle, his curiosity is stirred. However, his exploration of the facts isn’t easy when the adults around him aren’t used to having a “weird child” around.
The story comes to us in the third person perspectives of Mayken and Gil.

The book started off really well, especially in the 1629 timeline. The 1989 timeline was duller in comparison, with hardly anything to hold my interest. But when I reached the halfway mark of the book, I realised that I was registering nothing, my mind drifting away more and more often. So I went back all the way to the start and forced myself to concentrate. However, I began to lose interest at exactly the same point. I completed this book only by sheer determination and a hatred of DNFing. When a book has two timelines and neither keeps you invested, there’s no way this ship would sail to a happy ending.

The obvious common factor between the two timelines is that they come to us from a child’s perspective. Both the kids are adventurous, inquisitive, atypical of their era, and orphans. Mayken is an especially amazing character, what with her tendency to explore forbidden areas, her wild imagination, her love for her nurse maid Imke – also a great character, and her determination to be brave. Gil’s personality is more subdued in comparison, though he also has a whimsical side to him. Both kids however never behave their age, especially evident through Mayken’s fondness for using the F word. Slightly implausible that a wealthy and sheltered young girl of the early 17th century would know and use a cuss word! The only character I liked in the 1989 story was Enkidu the tortoise.

The historical timeline (the 1629 one, I mean. As I type this, I realise that both timelines are historical!) kept my attention much more than the modern one. The characters, the life aboard the ship, the old beliefs and superstitions, the mythical water monster, the darkness of the subsequent events – all were gripping to a great extent. However, as we see everything proceed only through Mayken’s eyes, we see what’s happening but we never realise why it happened. Especially considering the human machinations that resulted in such a gruesome outcome, knowing the reasons and the motivations of those involved would have helped much in feeling connected to the narrative.

There is a hint of the fantastical in both timelines, what with Mayken’s imagined monster and Gil’s investigation of the identity of the ghost girl. But the potential stays underutilised.

I had assumed that the “ghost” quest would somehow bind the two timelines together. But at the end, each timeline was cut off abruptly, with nary a connection established and many questions left unanswered. Moreover, the shift between the two timelines was very frequent, especially in the final quarter. Jumping between 1629 and 1989 after every 2-3 pages made for a bumpy and annoying ride, and the flat ending of both timelines sealed the disappointment.

I fail to see the point of Gil’s story as it had nothing to connect to the Batavia wreck except for the presence of the wreck itself in the background. The two tracks never feel like parts of the same fictional work. This novel might have worked much better for me had it focussed only on the Batavia story, thereby providing a detailed glimpse of the exact historical events.

The 1629 timeline is based on the actual shipwreck of the Batavia. I hadn’t heard of this incident and its gruesome fallout, and learning the truth of the incident left me incredulous. That said, I would have appreciated some suspense about the proceedings. However, the 1989 timeline reveals details about the 1629 events even before the historical timeline does. The latter spends a lot of time on the pre-wreck narrative but zooms through the actual event and its consequences. I read the Wikipedia entry after I completed the book to fill in the many blanks left by the novel. The wreck, its cause and its aftermath is like a horror story. How I wish the book had handled the post-wreck scenes better!

One factor where this negative reading experience is my fault is in my preference for balanced realism in writing. I'm not sure what I thought the book would be, but I certainly did not expect this endless cycle of death and darkness and abuse and misery, much of which was graphic. There is hardly any positivity in the book. On top of it, it includes gratuitous animal abuse as well! I know there are readers for such plots, but I am not one of them. I don’t mind dark reads, but seeing a plot that is so dark that it is almost carbon black? Not for me. This was almost like misery lit in the second half.

I’ve heard much praise about this author’s writing and I could see the beauty of her descriptions in this book as well. But as far as plot development is concerned, maybe I should try another book of hers to see if this novel was an aberration or the norm.

I cannot think of any strong positive point by which to recommend this book. However, all of my friends on Goodreads except two have rated this 4-5 stars. So it’s very clear that the book does hold appeal to the right reader, and I encourage you to pick it up and discover the same for yourself. In the meantime, I go looking for a book with some rays of sunshine to heal my broken heart.

2 stars, almost entirely for Mayken and for making me aware of the Batavia shipwreck.


My thanks to Canongate and NetGalley for the DRC of “The Night Ship”. This review is voluntary and contains my honest opinion about the book. Sorry this didn’t work out better.







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This is a dual timeline historical fiction based around the true events of the 1700s Batavia shipwreck and mutiny off the Western Australian coast. The first story involves Mayken, a 9 year old Dutch girl, on her way to Batavia in 1628, to live with her father after the death of her mother. The second storyline features lonely 9 year old boy Gil who is taken to the Abrolhos Islands 300 years later to live with his crusty old grandfather Joss, a cray fisherman, after his mother has passed away.

I have always been intrigued by the story about the Batavia, which was shipwrecked in 1629, on the Abrolhos Islands, while on its maiden voyage to Batavia (Jakarta). The ship was commanded by two men: upper merchant, Francisco Pelsaert and skipper Ariaen Jacobsz, both of whom already hated each other prior to the voyage. Mutiny was brewing prior to the fatal shipwreck. After running aground many of the passengers were offloaded onto small islands nearby, others had to be left on the ship and were drowned. Francisco Pelsaert made the decision to take a group of 48 people in an open long boat and make their way 3,200km to Batavia to get help. Amazingly this was successful, but by the time the rescue boat returned the remote islands had turned into a scene of brutal massacre and carnage. Jeronimus Cornelisz, the Under merchant, took charge, and with a group of thugs set themselves up on Batavia’s Graveyard (now Beacon Island) and began to systematically eliminate the survivors, including the children, to reduce competition for food and the chance of being hung for mutiny if the rescue ship returned. Some of the women were kept alive as sex slaves. Cornelisz and his men disarmed and marooned the loyalist soldiers in the group on nearby West Wallabi island. Instead of perishing, this group found water, and under the leadership of Wiebbe Haijes, withstood attacks on them, and were able to intercept the rescue ship Sardam first and tell their version of the gruesome events. Pelsaert executed Cornelisz and some of the mutineers on the islands, two men were left on the coast of Western Australia, and the rest sailed to Batavia. Of the original 341 ship inhabitants only 122 made it back to Batavia with at least 125 having been murdered on the Abrolhos, others having drowned or perished.

Jess Kidd’s version is beautifully written and atmospheric but some of the events are lost in the childish recount of the story. I felt too much time was spent following Mayken’s search for an eel monster, the Bullebak, instead of helping us understand the mutiny and events. Gil faces a similar fearsome monster, the Bunyip, based on local Indigenous folklore. Both children face terrible tragedy and heartbreak. Gil is considered weird by the rough islanders and persecuted by both adults and children. His only solace is his pet tortoise Enkidu (named for the Gilgamesh epic).

This was a well-written atmospheric story but probably got itself overly caught up with monster stories, which may not have been entirely necessary given the monstrous reality actually occurring. ( )

I love Jess Kidd’s books . This one has the usual blend of folklore, mythology, history, horror and the supernatural (or is it.)If you know the story of the Batavia, you won’t go in expecting a walk in the park, and you certainly won’t get one. She makes you care about the two child protagonists and then deftly flips back and forth between the two tales. I saw others complaining about it, but I felt that it served to heighten the suspense. She subtly creates empathy for outcasts in all her books and leaves you hoping for a happy ending. Do you get one at all in this book…. Still thinking about it. ( )

Man oh man, I just couldn't get into this. I didn't really care for either storyline, and when I considered where I thought it might be going and if it was worth sticking it out to get there, I drew a blank. I have no idea where it's going, and not in a good way. This was just a bit too slow and unclear for me. I found myself asking "what's the point?" of it a lot, which isn't always a blocked for me but in this case it was. I might give this another try when I'm feeling more ponderous.

Two orphans, a girl and a boy, separated by 360 years, are marooned on the same island off the coast of Australia in Jess Kidd's beautiful 2022 novel “The Night Ship.” And when I call it beautiful, I refer not just to the story she tells but also to the clothbound book itself. Publishers don't always give such artistic attention to novels, but Atria did so here with the cover design and the inside art. The pages are even a physical pleasure to turn.

As for the story, Mayken is aboard the Batavia bound from Holland to the Dutch Indies in 1629 in the company of her nursemaid, Imke. But while Imke sleeps at night, Mayken loves to explore the ship, even breaking all rules, disguised as a boy, to roam below decks in search of a monster she believes to be hiding there. Through her wanderings she meets a variety of men and women aboard the ship, many of whom will later help her and others who turn out to be worse than any imagined monster.

The Batavia wrecks, with most of the passengers finding their way to a small island with no fresh water and little food other than what can be salvaged from the ship. The novel turns into The Lord of the Flies revisited as men divide and seek to conquer the limited resources, women included.

In 1989, the death of his mother sends young Gil to this same island, where his grandfather, Joss, is a fisherman at odds with most of the other fishermen on the island. Gil is described as weird, and some of his actions deserve that adjective. Like Mayken so many years before him, he becomes targeted, especially after other boys come to the island to summer with their fathers.

Meanwhile scientists on the island dig for artifacts to try to determine exactly what happened to the Batavia and its passengers. Much of this story is based on historical events.

Kidd takes us back and forth in time to tell two stories that gradually become one. ( )