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Boston Jacky: Being An Account Of The Further Adventures Of Jacky Faber, Taking Care Of Business (2013)

by L.A. Meyer(Favorite Author)

3.97 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

0547974957 (ISBN13: 9780547974958)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

HMH Books for Young Readers

series

Bloody Jack

review 1: Review of Audiobook.Awe jacky! That loveable imp of a girl. I've enjoyed the adventures with Miss Faber via the narration by Katherine Kellgren. I don't think I could "read" this series with my eyes and have the same vibrant exciting experience of each character that Katherine Kellgren gives.But it is time for Jacky and Jaimy to FINALLY come together!!!There is adventure as usual but with a twist in the form of Miss Clarissa Worthington Howe, and ohhhhh what a twist that is! Worth reading just for that alone. Jacky comes under fire when she butts heads with the C.O.W.S. and earns the ire of Amy. She once again runs into trouble with Judge Thwackham and what a mess ensues! Let's just say, a bit of purple haze is involved. It seems Jacky just can't catch a break.Women's rig... morehts, prohibition, New Orleans, Boston, child protective service (what there was at the time), drug use and abuse, witchcraft accusation, lawyers, lady's of the night, theater, Miss Pim's School for young ladies, Charley and his gang, being whipped, business rivalry and good old mayhem.Spoiler: I must say, the one thing I didn't care for was Jaimy whipping Jacky. If any abuse must be shown in the story, let it not be between these two people. That is just not cool.
review 2: Jacky Faber and Miley Cyrus have the exact same career arc and predictable end. Now that's a surprise. This is what happens to strong minded, strong willed, young girls who choose to rise above their less than ideal circumstances to challenge the world on their terms. They end up tied to a post while the love of their live, whom they've sacrificed everything for, endured being held against their will "for their own good" by their jealous cheating boyfriends. Jacky who let wiser men who have ultimate control over their life and money where she could get the hell beaten out of her, by authority figures, (Lawson-Peabody)and where they're so gullible that the most of the girls are abducted by slavers. So much for all that pricey tuition, I hope Jacky got a refund for that year. Oh..almost forgot about the insane kidnapping preacher. Ezra Pickering has dubious skills as a lawyer. I seriously think he and Amy are exploiting Jacky and her obvious lack of skill at negotiating the higher ranks of society. I mean..how hard could it be to hide all that treasure from Rapture of the Deep. It's just a little too perfect for Jacky to be falling into the hands of all her enemies, completely vulnerable with a death sentence hanging over her head.( a deep childhood phobia from her orphan days) Sure she gets to be nearly raped in every book, by an astonishing number of men older and stronger than she is, but hey..she has her trusty knife to defend herself. The same knife she saw her childhood friend and protector murdered with..that talks to her when under great emotional strain. I'm beginning to think be the last couple of books.. I think it was Mississippi Jack, that Jacky was having a bit of a breakdown. It would be only natural. Then she's compelled to become a whore and a spy, wait..spy first, whore second, or die..after traumatizing every man she's known, which she constantly berates herself while justifying her behavior. The violence visited upon Jacky is disproportionate and graphic and I find it increasingly disturbing as the series progresses. As does the overall behavior of our hero. As the mother of a daughter who would be the approximate age of Jacky as she has her adventures, I find her rationalizations for being pretty slutty, pretty thin. Not being raised proper is the worst excuse, and is seen as total garbage in the later books..since she had been properly educated by Mistress Pimm who she has a great deal of respect for. She had the constant example and advise of Higgins, who we're reminded over and over again of his impeccable credentials. So lack of knowledge, becomes no excuse, as does lack of experience . Lack of character and responsibility are more likely to blame. Along with an unhealthy mental unbalance, and possible delusion about this love match with James Emerson Fletcher.I'm of two minds of how this series can end, and to be true to the story arc Mr. Meyer created I'm not really seeing a happily ever after. That's what he'll give the fans, or he'll be the most hated author in America; displacing George R.R. Martin and Diana Gabaldon, who have failed miserably to successfully to write long series that doesn't ultimately end in an anticlimax. I guess the unconventional ending, is to let Jacky hang. But for heavens sake be interesting about it. Let this endless pussyfooting between her and Jamey be resolved. How about that it was no accident that they've been kept apart after the Dolphin. Let Jamey be the ultimate agent of the Crown and be Mr. Super Spy. Manipulating Jacky from the start. That would at least make sense. It would be awful, but it would but it would explain a lot. The ultimate betrayal. Let him be the one that hangs her. But that will not happen. Neither will the a very credible explanation that at some point poor Jacky lost her mind, possibly under the terror of her imminent hanging while imprisoned at Newgate, one of the two times she was there and all the adventures were a figment of her broken mind. Or maybe some absurd oxygen deprivation hallucination dream sequence from when she's hung in Bloody Jack. But that's not going to happen. There's going to be some insipid, stupid, unjustified, forgiveness, and these two "lovers" will sail off into the sunset. It is inevitable. And I for one will never recommend this series to another person again. I tend to not expect too much from authors, since they are the gods of their character's universes. Sometimes tragic things happen to good and worthy characters. It is an authors prerogative to move his characters as he will, within the world he authors. I as a reader, who has entered that world, suspended belief, and interacted with those characters, invests a certain amount of trust in the author, not that everything will be a happily ever after..but a satisfying reading experience. So many authors seem to forget that. That although their characters may live in a relative bubble, the readers of their work do not. How sad it it, that a character that was truly admirable, while being flawed..was in the end, not so admirable at all. Our Jacky, by book 11 is a mess.She has fallen out wit Amy, the one friend who has been her moral compass, and her conscious. Failed to, despite the advantages she has sought for herself overcome the disadvantages of her early years. She's lost custody of both her kids, having to break one out of jail. Has to go find her treasure stash, because of her irresponsible, extravagant, impulsive spending. Going through several fortunes of a lifetime. It's like bad reality TV, she drops off someone who's scared and vulnerable at a whorehouse,where she's found overdosed and insensible with a transgendered prostitute a week later. We then are treated to pre Civil War detox of Clarissa, by a former slave. Really? We hear throughout the whole book her pining for what amounts to an abusive boyfriend. Jealous, cheating, violent, we even have a illegitimate baby thrown in to boot. And at the end..after he beats the living crap out of her..in anger..the final scene is of her on her knees wailing for him to come back. I'm very sorry, but that's not heroic, it's pathetic. I thought those types of themes weren't what we wanted young women to think was acceptable, or to be tolerated. Maybe Mr. Meyer didn't get that memo..being a middle aged man. That although it could have happened in a given historical period, having a young girl repeatedly brutalized by men, just isn't cool.The way I know this is, If I thought of how I'd react if Jacky were..let's say a high profile badly behaved provocative female pop singer. She wouldn't be someone I'd hold up as a a bright and shining light. We'd be sick of her antics all ready, her stunts, her stupidity, vapidity. We'd be done and want her to toddle off to rehab and take all the drama with her. Well it's a shame..and exhausting..after 11 books not to really care anymore. Go away Jacky..toddle off to wherever has been heroines go. Maybe you'll warrant a novella..but I doubt I'll care. less

Download links for: Boston Jacky: Being an Account of the Further Adventures of Jacky Faber, Taking Care of Business

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