Pirates really and truly got away with murder on the branding front. Literally. Somehow, murder, armed robbery, scurvy, terrible hygiene, and sleeping in a damp wooden box performing hard manual labor became rum, sea shanties, swagger, sword fights, treasure chests, excellent coats, and one of fiction’s most reliable sources of hot men. (Save me, Will Turner!)
Victoria Aveyard doesn’t exactly correct the record in “Tempest.”
Her latest — her adult debut — follows Cat, a woman about to hang for treason at the hands of her frenemy naval officer, Jasper Fell, and the Meridian Empire nearly a decade after her life among pirates fell apart. Well, unless, that is, she helps the empire capture Valerian Kane, the notorious pirate captain she just so happens to have once loved. The book jumps between two versions of Cat: the younger woman who first enters the pirates’ orbit and the older, much more hardened woman who wants to leave the Lyrian Sea (and Valerian) far, far behind. Because somewhere — somehow — between those timelines, everything went utterly and spectacularly wrong.
Aveyard is very, very, very good at making pirate life look appealing. She gets all of the details (both important and inconsequential) right — the ships, the clothing, the taverns, the islands, the treachery, the whole glorious romance of it. And the politics give the story something to really latch on to. Some of my favorite parts of the book were the imperial occupation, the crumbling pirate republic, the constantly competing loyalties, and the shifting power structures. I almost wish Aveyard had leaned into them even harder, because “pirates versus empire” interested me a lot more than some of the time we spend on other things. Dead men may tell no tales, but luckily, “Tempest” has plenty of living people with secrets, grudges, loyalties, and political agendas — and I would’ve happily spent several hundred more pages watching them scheme and be stuck on boats.
“Tempest” was originally supposed to be a standalone novel before it became the first half of the Lyrian Sea duology, and you can feel that decision deep in the bones of this book. To get a reader to pick up book No. 2, the first half of a series needs its own satisfying arc; this one ends just as I felt like the real story was finally getting underway. I can’t help but think that this story might have worked so much better as one giant book, maybe with material spun off into a novella rather than woven through the present-day story.
Because the book’s biggest problem for me is everything that happens “before” and “after.” I understand why the dual-timeline structure exists — it did a good job of keeping me engaged in both storylines and wanting to keep reading — and some of the “before” chapters are necessary and interesting. But the split felt random. There’s no connective tissue here; the missing “between” section contains so much of what I actually wanted to read about: Cat becoming this version of Cat, Cat and Valerian becoming CAT AND VALERIAN <3 <3, the pirate republic growing into something real, loyalties shifting, people changing sides. I never found the missing gap particularly mysterious. I found it frustrating. Because while both versions of Cat make sense individually, without that stupid missing middle, her transformation between the two sections never quite does. I understand who, exactly, she’s supposed to be now, but the book didn’t give me enough to understand exactly how she got there.
That also made Cat harder for me to fully latch onto. I don’t mind that she’s selfish or morally gray. I like that about her! Let women be evil! But her characterization sometimes felt as though Cat was explaining away her choices rather than owning them, and I wanted her to lean harder into the ruthlessness the book kept telling me she’d developed. It probably doesn’t help that Valerian — the actual murderous, ruthless pirate — comes across as more principled.
Speaking of Valerian: more, please. He was easily the most interesting character, but Aveyard rationed him out and left me hungry. He has charisma, swagger, a background, steadfast beliefs, actual characterization, and, importantly, is a sexy pirate in a book about pirates. Every time he appeared, the story got more interesting, and there’s clearly chemistry still there between the former longtime lovers. So it sucks that he and Cat spend so much of the “after” estranged. Jasper, meanwhile, took much longer to do anything for me, and even then, I never felt like I understood enough about his motivations or personality to justify how much space he occupied. I wanted more Cat and Valerian, more romance, more politics, more pirates doing pirate-y things. I didn’t need more Jasper. But maybe that’s a symptom of Aveyard’s weak characterization, which leans more tell than show. This book is over 450 pages, yet I came away feeling like I didn’t truly know this trio.
I also wanted more from the magic, which spends most of the book hovering around the book’s edges. The ending finally starts to crack that door open — storm magic! a brewing revolution! defeating an empire! — and I could see the book I really wanted to read coming into focus. “Tempest” sometimes feels less like a complete first volume than one long setup for that book.
Aveyard’s writing is flowery, but her prose mostly worked for me — even if she desperately needed someone to start crossing out repetitions (and to find a better copy editor, oof). I understood what Valerian looked like the second time she described him: His “tempest eyes” appear in the text 12 times. Twelve! By the second time, I still remembered, I promise!
But for all of my complaining, I was hooked. I inhaled this book — the story, the betrayals, the romance, the adventure. Aveyard absolutely nails the pirate-world atmosphere. The Lyrian Sea feels hot and salty and dangerous; the descriptions of the ships, islands, and taverns kept pulling me along. There’s real texture to this world, and the politics give all the swashbuckling more weight than simple pirate cosplay. Aveyard made me want to keep sailing around this world even as I started wondering where the rest of the story had gone. I could see the whole story unfolding cinematically in my head — preferably with a very large budget.
For a book that left me wanting in so many places, “Tempest” also left me wanting more. I may have spent 450-plus pages wishing Aveyard would show me more of the voyage story, but by the end, I was already ready to head back out to sea.
Thanks to NetGalley and Harper Voyager for providing me with an e-ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.
