Hey bookworm friends. Now that the #BBNYA2025 winner has been announced, it’s time for the finalists tour! This week I’ll be sharing my full thoughts on The Revenge of Captain Vessia.
About The Revenge of Captain Vessia
Author: Leslie Allen
Genre(s): Fantasy, Romance, LGBTQIA2+
Age Category: Adult
Page Count: 449 Pages
Pub Date: October 4, 2024
⟡
Blurb
Claire Vessia’s been sentenced to death.
The last survivor of a ship of would-be-pirates captured by the navy, she’s been accused of all of their crimes.
She will die for it. Determined to go out with her head held high, her plans for a stoic execution are thrown out the window when a highborn lady offers her a chance to escape the noose… if she pays in vials of her own blood.
But she is betrayed.
Hung from the gallows and buried at sea, she rises amidst the waves as a Vampyri, an undead monster. Without a clue of where, or even what she is, and only a terrible hunger to guide her, it’s only when she consumes a person trying to help her that she begins to understands what’s been done to her.
Swearing revenge against the noble woman that turned her, the nation that accused her, and its people that killed her, Claire makes an oath that she will hunt down anyone under the navy’s flag, and carve a blood-strewn path on her quest for vengeance.
But when the perfect chance to strike takes the form of the child of her maker – Claire must ask herself how far she’s willing to go for justice.
Purchase Links
⟡ Amazon US│Amazon UK│Amazon CA ⟡
Review
The starting scene of The Revenge of Captain Vessia is so dramatic that it hooked me right away! We meet Captain Claire Vessia in jail having been falsely accused of a whole pirate ship’s worth of crimes. As she’s waiting to be executed, the narrative immediately sets up such tension and high stakes that it captured my attention. There’s nothing like a miscarriage of justice that makes me incandescent with rage so I felt very protective of her from the start. Capain Vessia’s voice is engaging and multi-layered; I loved following the story from her POV.
“The morning of my execution, I awoke in more pain than I had ever felt in my life.”
Plotwise, it’s a book unlike anything else I’ve ever read! My favourite parts of the story are the world-building details of how a vampire would go about being a pirate captain and maintain her identity hidden. I also particularly enjoyed that we didn’t spend the entire story just on the ship but that we went to different locations. This world is fun and traveling around made me feel like this world is lived in and leaves questions open for the continuation of the series! Additionally, the pacing flowed in a satisfying way for me, there were swashbuckling action scenes when I wanted them and introspective moments when I wanted them too.
I also love how diverse the pirate crew members were. Captain Vessia made sure there was some trans and nonbinary representation on her pirate ship. The interactions of the crew were fun but I wish that more of the side characters felt more relevant to the actual plot. That being said, Captain Vessia’s love interest, Moira, is an interesting character and I loved her so much that I wanted there to be some chapters in her POV to understand her thought processes better and to flesh out the romance a bit more. I wouldn’t say it’s exactly Enemies to Lovers, rather there’s a difference of ethics between those two that they had to wrestle with. But I’m not really sure that they dealt with it so much as shoved it aside so they could finally be together.
“They had made me a monster. I would show them just what a monster really looked like.”
Overall, the story was gripping, I enjoyed the revenge arc, exploring this world and spending time with the characters so I had fun with this read. However, it also feels like a mixed reading experience because honestly, it would greatly benefit from another round of proofreading. It was riddled with typos, grammatical errors, and just using the wrong words at times. The frequency in which I found errors did impact my enjoyment which is a bummer because the story is good! Regardless, I’m always a huge advocate of indie books so if you think you’d like any part of this story, I encourage you to give it a try for yourself! After all, it did make it to the finals 😜.
About
Leslie Allen is a librarian, sailor, amateur astronomer, and has traveled the world. Yet she somehow found herself back home in small town Nova Scotia.
She is often simultaneously plotting her next tattoo while sipping white hot chocolate and plotting the downfall of her characters. She devours stories in every medium she can find, but her favorites are movies and video games, and being eternally frustrated that they never go far enough.
You can find more about her on bluesky, @cozywitch and her website leslieallen.com
About BBNYA
BBNYA is a yearly competition where book bloggers from all over the world read and score books written by indie authors, ending with 15 (17 in 2025) finalists and one overall winner. If you want some more information about BBNYA, check out the BBNYA Website. The award is brought to you in association with @The Write Reads.
Let’s chat in the comments!
Would you rather read a vampire book or a pirate book?
