{"id":25815,"date":"2015-01-25T01:22:40","date_gmt":"2015-01-25T05:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=25815"},"modified":"2015-01-25T01:22:40","modified_gmt":"2015-01-25T05:22:40","slug":"review-of-the-jupiter-pirates-hunt-for-the-hydra-by-jason-fry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/blog\/?p=25815","title":{"rendered":"Review of The Jupiter Pirates: Hunt for the Hydra, by Jason Fry"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"jupiter_pirates_large\"<\/a>The Jupiter Pirates<\/p>\n

Hunt for the Hydra<\/em><\/p>\n

by Jason Fry<\/p>\n

Harper, 2014. 241 pages.<\/p>\n

Set in the far distant future, this new series, The Jupiter Pirates<\/em> tells about Tycho Hashoone, a kid who lives on a spaceship. In fact, he\u2019s from a family with a heritage of being space pirates for generations.<\/p>\n

Now, however, they are not pirates, but privateers. <\/p>\n

As Tycho\u2019s mother, Diocletia, never failed to point out, privateers weren\u2019t the same as pirates. Pirates ignored the law, preying on any spacecraft that had the misfortune to stray into their gunsights. They stole cargoes and mistreated the ships\u2019 crews they imprisoned \u2013 if they didn\u2019t sell them into slavery or kill them.<\/p>\n

Privateers conducted themselves differently. They obeyed the laws of space, kept careful records about the cargoes they seized, treated prisoners well, and released them as soon as possible. And they used force only when necessary. Those rules were part of the Hashoones\u2019 letter of marque, the document that authorized them to attack enemy ships on behalf of their home government, the Jovian Union, composed of the nearly two dozen inhabited moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The book begins with Tycho in command of the family\u2019s ship, during the night watch. His mother, the captain, allows him to stay in command while they intercept a freighter from Earth, an enemy ship. However, the ship claims diplomatic immunity because of a diplomat on board. But there\u2019s something fishy about that claim.<\/p>\n

The family must go to court on the neutral dwarf planet Ceres. This leads into suspicious things to investigate, more space travel, encounters with actual pirates, and battles in space.<\/p>\n

This book is fun, if not weighty. Tycho has a twin sister, Yana, and together with their older brother Carlo, the three are in a competition to see who will get to inherit the captaincy of their ship some day.<\/p>\n

When Carlo or Yana was in command of the Comet,<\/em> Tycho of course wanted them to succeed: every prize taken was more money for their family and helped the Jovian Union in its struggle against Earth. But he didn\u2019t want them to do too<\/em> well and hurt his own chances at the captain\u2019s chair. Ideally, something would go wrong \u2013 something that wasn\u2019t bad enough to endanger the ship and their lives, but bad enough that their mother would notice and remember. But that was a dangerous game. In space, things that went wrong had a way of proving fatal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Their grandfather, Huff, is on board, so injured in the past that almost half of his body parts are artificial. He\u2019s still a bloodthirsty pirate at heart, and he seemed a bit stereotypical. Maybe he was intended as comic relief? I got a little annoyed by the \u201cArrrr\u201ds he threw into conversations.<\/p>\n

But all in all, this is a fun story about legal and humane privateering with a mystery and space battles and a kid who gets to command a spaceship.<\/p>\n

jupiterpirates.com<\/a>
\nharpercollinschildrens.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Buy from Amazon.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Find this review on Sonderbooks<\/a> at: www.sonderbooks.com\/Childrens_Fiction\/jupiter_pirates.html<\/a><\/p>\n

Disclosure: I am an Amazon Affiliate, and will earn a small percentage if you order a book on Amazon after clicking through from my site.<\/p>\n

Source: This review is based on a library book from Loudoun County Public Library.<\/p>\n

Disclaimer: I am a professional librarian, but I maintain my website and blogs on my own time. The views expressed are solely my own, and in no way represent the official views of my employer or of any committee or group of which I am part.<\/p>\n

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