Piracy. Romance. Revenge. Across the seas of the seventeenth century, two seafarers are forced to fight for their lives. The sequel to The City of Tears, The Ghost Ship is the third novel in The Joubert Family Chronicles from bestselling author Kate Mosse.

The Barbary Coast, 1621. A mysterious vessel floats silently on the water. It is known only as the Ghost Ship. For months it has hunted pirates to liberate those enslaved during the course of their merciless raids, manned by a courageous crew of mariners from Italy and France, Holland and the Canary Islands.

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But the bravest among them are not who they seem. The stakes could not be higher. If arrested, they will be hanged for their crimes. Can they survive the journey and escape their fate?

A sweeping and epic love story, ranging from France in 1610 to Amsterdam and the Canary Islands in the 1620s, The Ghost Ship is a thrilling novel of adventure and buccaneering, love and revenge, stolen fortunes and hidden secrets on the High Seas. Most of all, it is a tale of defiant women in a man’s world.

My Review

When you read a book by award-winning novelist Kate Mosse, you know it’s going to be epic. And it is. I’ve read the first two books in The Joubert Family Chronicles (plus a few of her others) – each one has different protagonists, but I think Louise may be my favourite. She embodies the spirit of feminism – 300 years later and she’d have no doubt been a suffragette.

Not only did I love her, but I also loved everyone else. Minout and Piet, Marta, Alis and Cornelia, Jean-Jacques, all from the previous story, and now Gilles, brave and devoted. And the crew of ‘The Old Moon’. Apart from the captain, but we’ll come to him later.

One of the things that got me really excited was when the ship arrived at Gran Canaria. I’ve been four times and will be going back later in the year for almost two months. The familiar names of the places – Las Palmas, Galdar (we stayed there for a couple of days last October), Agaete, San Bartolome de Tirajana – I’ve been to all of them. Nowadays Gran Canaria is one of the most chilled places I’ve ever been, but then we don’t have the Spanish Inquisition in situ anymore.

We start off in France, in La Rochelle, where Louise lives with her grandparents Minou and Piet. Her mother Marta and father Louis Vidal were murdered 25 years earlier in Holland. Louise was a child and remembers seeing her mother’s body – so much blood – but can’t remember anything else.

In the meantime Gilles was living with his mother, who tormented him and physically abused him. When his twin died, he was sent away to live with his uncle where he learnt all about the wine trade and was valued and loved. But don’t imagine his mother did it out of the goodness of her heart – her motive was purely financial.

Ten years later, a tragedy forced him to leave and it was Louise who rescued him. Now we are into the main story. Louise and Gilles are aboard ‘The Old Moon’, but as a woman Louise can’t be in charge, so Henrik Joost is engaged as the aforementioned captain after his father has paid enough to keep Cornelia’s company afloat (excuse the pun). He’s not exactly popular with the crew.

The ship is to sail to the Canary Islands, owned by the Spanish (still is), but the inhabitants show their allegiance grudgingly as the Spanish took it by force. There is a museum in Galdar where you can learn more about the origins of Gran Canaria.

The book is quite long so I won’t bore you with my take in too much detail, but suffice to say that once we are at sea, the story moves at a cracking pace, a bit like ‘The Old Moon’ when the wind is in her sails.

Why is it called The Ghost Ship though, I hear you ask. It’s because for months ‘The Old Moon’ has been hunting ‘pirates to liberate those enslaved during the course of their merciless raids, manned by a courageous crew of mariners from Italy and France, Holland and the Canary Islands’. But no one sees it come and go, it gains a mystical reputation, hence being known as the ghost ship.

Piracy, the slave trade, murder, romance, intrigue and secrets galore, this is Kate Mosse at her very best. Wonderfully written and perfectly researched, I hope there will be a fourth book to continue with the story as hinted at in the last chapter.

Many thanks to @annecater for inviting me to be part of #RandomThingsTours

About the Author

Kate Mosse is an international bestselling author with sales of more than five million copies in 42 languages. Her fiction includes the novels Labyrinth (2005), Sepulchre (2007), The Winter Ghosts (2009), and Citadel (2012), as well as an acclaimed collection of short stories, The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales (2013). The Taxidermist’s Daughter was published in 2014.

Kate is the Co-Founder and Chair of the Board of the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction (previously the Orange Prize) and in June 2013, was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List for services to literature. She lives in Sussex.