Capitana

Gr 8 Up–This fantasy is awash with pirates and pirate hunters. Ximena Reale, the daughter of pirates and traitors to the Luzan Empire, has spent the last four years trying to prove her loyalty to the Empire by becoming one of the top students of La Academia de los Cazadores. Ximena’s dedication and research earns her a spot on the mission to capture Gasparilla, the only pirate to successfully besiege the capital. Fellow candidate Dante de Leon is also assigned to the hunt but only one of them will earn the Cazadoro cloak. Ximena has been on many pirate-hunting voyages before, but the journey to arrest Gasparilla will challenge everything she knows about her family and her role in the Empire. Life at La Academia is cutthroat and unforgiving. Ximena knows there is no room for weakness in her goal of becoming a Cazadoro and upholding the Law. She is unyielding in her defense of the Empire even as other characters reveal the negative effects of Luzan imperialism. The fast-paced plot doesn’t leave much time for Ximena to really process these new discoveries, but readers will cheer as she comes to her own conclusions about the Empire’s influence. This book is the first in a duology and ends with an exciting cliffhanger that will once again pit Ximena and Dante against each other in the second book. The novel is set in a fantasy world; James liberally sprinkles Spanish throughout the book and characters have Latinx names.