Fourteen years before the beginning of this story, there was an earthquake in Port Royal that unleashed some magic into the world. This magic manifested itself by giving all existing babies in the Port Royal area the ability to walk on water. Fourteen years later, only two polliwiggles (people who can walk on water) are left – Monk and Jolly.

These two teens meet up after Jolly’s ship is sunk, and her crew is killed by poisonous spiders – she’s the only one able to escape, and washes up on the island where Monk’s family is now living in hiding. After Monk’s parents get killed by the Acherus (a creature of the Mare Tenebrosum, a sea that exists in a world beyond our own), Monk and Jolly set off on an adventure on a ship manned by ghosts, in order to learn how to stop the evil stuff that’s treatening to enter our world.

I wish this book had been written, published and translated about 15 years ago – I would have loved to read this book then! Not that I didn’t completely love it now, but kids always have a different perspective on stories, you know? It is, in my opinion, the perfect adventure novel. It’s got everything you could possibly want – pirates, gold, a pirate princess, magic, ghost pirates, , the potential for a little bit of romance and sailing the high seas in order to stop evil other-wordly beings from destroying our world.

This was a non-stop adventure from the moment the book starts in the middle of a sea battle. There’s never a dull moment, and I really really really want to get my hands on the other two books in the trilogy asap so I can find out what is going to happen.

This book is called Pirate Curse in the USA, and was tranlsated by Elizabeth D. Crawford. I’m not sure how different the translations would be, but the one translated by Bell was fabulous. From the reviews on amazon.com, the biggest difference seems to be that Jolly and Monk are called polliwogs instead of polliwiggles.