Pirate’s Primer

Pirate’s Primer
Jill Knowles
Loose Id LLC
ISBN: 978-1-59632-546-3
Erotic Gay Romance, Fantasy, Paranormal Novella
Reviewed by Shannon Frost

Ever since his legs were crushed by his fallen horse during a cavalry charge, Lieutenant Adam Chandler has studied the lore of the sea dreaming of adventures free from his crutches. When he discovers his father has in custody a pirate captain, Adam goes to the jail and discovers the man is none other than the legendary Captain Jaden Fox, who has been dead for over two hundred years and continues to sail the world on his ghost ship, the Grey Lady, exacting justice upon all who break the laws of the seas. Instant attraction sparks between them, and when Jaden offers Adam lessons in passion in exchange for his services teaching his crew to read and write, Adam can’t refuse the pirate captain. Life aboard the ghost ship seems perfect, until crew members begin vanishing, making Adam wonder if his presence is the cause of the tragedies, and leaving him willing to do anything to bring peace once again to his beloved captain’s ship.
For all their ill ways, there’s just something about pirates that brings romantic imagery to mind, as the monumental success of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies proved so well. In Pirate’s Primer, readers are presented with such romantic imagery in the dashing pirate hero, Jaden Fox, who is kind, generous and just, as opposed to murderous, ruthless and greedy. The story is engaging from the start, and the writing is strong enough where it’s easy to suspend disbelief to the point where you can buy into the fact that there’s a lonely pirate ghost looking for love, but the one area where it is difficult to extend that suspension was that until Jaden, Adam had virtually no notion of the intimate relations men can have together, and apparently had never felt even a glimmer of attraction for another man. While it’s part of the story that Jaden is to instruct Adam in the ways of passion, one would think that an adult man who has shared the companionship of other men for the better part of his life, and who has had some sexual experience would be a little more informed on the subject of homosexuality. It’s one thing to be innocent into how things are done, say if Adam had always harbored secret feelings toward other men but repressed them; it’s another to be completely baffled as to why a man would want to kiss another man. Though, Adam does adapt quite well to the new knowledge, and this leads to several passionate scenes between the two men as Adam experiences many things for the first time, so his naivety has little affect on the intense eroticism of the work. When Pirate’s Primer comes to its conclusion, even though it has a satisfying ending for the immediate story, it still feels as though it’s just begun to scratch the surface of this fantasy world, leaving it so you want to see more adventures from these likeable characters, which makes this a perfect tale for anyone looking to read about some high seas erotic romance.