Ring of the Slave Prince

By Bjarne Reuter

Book Overview

From one of Denmark's foremost writers, here is his most impressive book to date-a roguishly fantastic adventure story of piracy, slave owners, witch burning, shipwrecks, desert islands, and larger-than-life characters-the largest of which is fourteen-year-old Tom O'Connor, a poor, adventurous, charming liar who lives with his mother and half sister at a tavern on the island of Nevis in 1639. Good and evil, truth and lies, right and wrong tug at this unlikely hero when he rescues a slave from drowning, learns he is prince, loses him, travels the Southern Hemisphere in search of him, and finally brings him home to Cape Verde, hoping for a grand reward. But by the time Tom discovers that the prince is really a fisherman's son, the loss of reward doesn't matter-his adventures have brought him no use for greed, and as he says, "a reckless regard for other people's life and well-being." Translated from Danish by Tiina Nunnally.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0525471464
• ISBN13: 9780525471462
• Release Date: December 2003
• Publisher: Dutton Juvenile
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 1.2" x 6.3"
• Age Range: 12 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 7

Customer Reviews

every boy's dream of adventure

This would make a great movie with one incredible twist after another. The adventures of the earlier chapters become the tall tales of incorrigible liar Tom O'Connor in later chapters. Tom leaves his home on a 17th century Caribbean island, seeking the slave he believes will be his fortune. In turn he becomes a shark fisherman, a blacksmith, sugar plantation overseer, cabin boy, castaway and pirate. It's all a bit unbelievable, but then that's the fun of it. This book is every boy's dream of adventure. A major theme is attitudes toward slavery, and along the way Tom's perception's change. The passages on the sugar plantation are tragic. Some comments will definitely be offensive to African American readers, but then we are meant to be appalled at them. In contrast, the pirate section is as light and comic as Pirates of the Caribbean. I read the book in translation from the Danish. The author uses strong language that some American audiences might object to, but not inappropriately to the time and characters. Tom does a lot of heavy drinking for one so young, but I suspect that is not inappropriate to the time period either. I never quite figured out the odd switches between present and past tense or the use of the third person instead of the second. Sometimes it was Spanish-speaking characters, but at others it was virulently anti-Spanish Englishmen, so why are they using Spanish sentence structure? There was some sloppy editing such as on p 132 when Sugar George says "I was the oldest" and on the next page his older brother dies. But all in all, a good read.