Vampirates: Demons of the Ocean by Justin Somper

Grace and Connor are twins who have always lived in a lighthouse.  One day, their father dies, and the bank takes the lighthouse.  Their only other options are becoming the bankers' children and staying at an orphanage, so they steal a ship and rush off to see.  Unfortunately, they get caught in a storm and their ship sinks.  The ship, that they mentioned that they were tied to with harnesses, sinks, and they are able to survive.  Those lovely harnesses just disappear once the ship sinks.  Grace is rescued by the same Vampirates she was warned about in her father's song.  Connor is rescued by regular pirates.  The captain of the regular pirates has a pet snake that eats dates.  As in the fruit.  On the ship, in his mock-battle with a regular pirate using mops, he wins on his second try, despite having never handled a sword.  Meanwhile, Grace must unravel the mystery of how the Vampirates' ship works.

Was the editor drunk?  There are many minor grammar errors that made me cringe.  Now, I probably have grammar and spelling errors on this blog, and I'd love it if you could point them out in the comments, but I don't have an editor.  I'll assume this book did have an editor, though this is a tenuous assumption.  I wish I had saved the page where a sentence is repeated twice in a paragraph, without any context or justification for doing so.

The characters were all a bit slow on the uptake.  Gee, you mean Lorcan wasn't really snubbing Grace?  Based on his behavior up to that point, I never would've guessed.

Justin Somper also does not know much about the things he writes about.  Captain Wrathe's snake eats dates.  There is not a single snake in the world that eats anything besides animals or insects.  The closest thing is a snake that eats eggs.  Also, if there is so much booty that is distributed fairly equally amongst the crew of the regular pirates' ship, then why do Bart and Connor have such dismal quarters?  Bart, at least, has been with the pirates for a while, and should have at least been able to obtain a better bed.

Vampirates had a good premise, but the obvious errors in grammar and fact made it hard for me to enjoy.