Pirate Queen

The Life of Grace O'Malley

De: Judith Cook

Narrado por: Katherine Anderson

In a life stranger than any fiction, Grace O'Malley, daughter of a clan chief in the far west of Ireland, went from marriage at fifteen to piracy on the high seas. She soon had a fleet of galleys under her commander, but her three decades of plundering, kidnapping, murder and mayhem came to a close in 1586, when she was captured and sentenced to hang.

Saved from the scaffold by none other than Queen Elizabeth herself—another powerful woman in a man's world—Grace's life took another extraordinary turn, when it was rumored she had become intelligencer for the queen's spymaster, Sir Francis Walsingham. Was this the price of her freedom?

Judith Cook explores this and other questions about the life and times of this remarkable woman in a fascinating, thrilling, and impeccably researched book.

©2004 the Estate of Judith Cook (P)2022 Tantor

The the readers English accent and sing song narration did not fit a book about Grace O’Malley

I found the readers voice to be distracting. She had an English accent, which seems dissonant for a book about Grace O’Malley, and her sing song reading style furthered that dissonance. It was such a distraction that I was unable to finish the book.

Fascinating and enjoyable.

I became aware of Grace’s story on a visit to Ballynahinch castle not far from Galway. I was engrossed in the resists and turns of Irish history that are not so familiar to many of us. Well written and informative.

Great story!

If you are interested in Irish history then read this book. Very informative and well written! Narrator did a great job too!

Not really about Grace

The book was interesting, but it was more Irish history of the time than specifically about Grace because, as the author acknowledged, there is little source material about her.

Painfully boring

The title implies that you’ll hear about a pirate, but you don’t. You hear about a lady that the author tells you was a pirate, but there is nothing in the way of pirating going in on this book. This is a book about Irish politics during the time of this lady’s life. And it’s beyond boring. It sounds like someone is reading a textbook to you. There is a lot of information in this book, just not on the topic of which I thought it would be on. I tried, but I gave up about halfway through. At the point where I left off she was in her late 30s or so and I figured I wouldn’t hear anything interesting or anything close to an high seas pirate story, so I gave up.