The last bookaneer

This book was cute, if longer than necessary. The premise was cute - before strict copyright laws, literature pirates called “bookaneers” would steal manuscripts and other literary etcs. and sell them for much cash. I wasn't sure if I was meant to sympathize with the bookaneers or not...there was a distinction made between the low-class and high-class bookaneers, with their wealth or lack thereof presumably being linked to their talent at their job, but to me it just seemed like the rich people got better descriptions. The top bookaneers were dashing and clever, masters of subterfuge and quite heroic, while the lower class bookaneers were “barnacles”, petty thieves, dirty, and dumb. Except to my mind, all the bookaneers are thieves so the class distinction was just there to make the rich ones feel better about their vocation. They're classy thieves, not like those dirty thieves. I could never really get into the glory of the search for rare manuscripts, considering that they're just doing it for money and they are hurting creative people's livelihoods. They just kind of seemed like assholes to me, or psychopaths, who were in it for the cash and the thrill of the chase, to see how well they could fool people into thinking they were benign. There were some inklings of Sherlock Holmes in how at least one of the bookaneers described the ways his plans unfolded. Especially considering the book was narrated by a bookaneer sidekick (one of the narrators).

There was also a lot of racism, which I know, it's arguable that in the late 1800s in Samoa all the white people were racist! So, yes, it doesn't come off as Pearl being racist, but as the characters he writes being racist - and especially considering that Robert Louis Stevenson is a main character in this book, the colonialist white man perspective makes sense...but there's a lot of talk of savages and cannibals, how Samoans are better than the other islanders because they're tall and their hair isn't kinky, “it may seem barbaric but remember, American Indians scalp people!”, RL Stevenson talking a bunch of BS about how all the Samoan people who work for him at his island mansion are his family, not his servants...there are some characters who are hatefully racist, and they're “bad guys” which I guess the hateful racism is supposed to indicate, but no acknowledgment that the white hero racism isn't so wonderful either. Which, again, the book was set in and meant to have been written in the late 1800s early 1900s so it's “true to life”, but there didn't seem to be anything tongue in cheek about it, no indications that Pearl was doing a send-up or a satire of writing of the time period. You can read a book actually published during that time and think, man those people were racist assholes! And then you can read this book fictionally published during that time but actually published in 2015 and hope that the emulation of the style was meant to be a criticism of it and not a nostalgic nod to times past but it really feels more like the latter. Like, I really want to honour these great writers by not changing any of their negative traits and especially not by challenging them or exploring them in any meaningful way from the current context that we live in.

Also the female characters mostly appeared to be around to provide character development for the men. RLS's female family members are less used as plot devices and more just 2-dimensional...I think the author tried to pull their characterizations from history so they weren't invented, which helped, but they also don't really have much personality. One of the other women was basically just where a main character's emotions and motivations come from.

Overall though, I liked the writing style and the general plot. The ending didn't do much for me, but by that time I was already skimming because the book was too long. It didn't ruin my enjoyment though, I can just pretend the book ended earlier! It's an adventurous romp with people I didn't care for but was interested in what would happen to them!