I adored the first six books and devoured them over the course of just a few months, but this, the seventh, was a disappointment.

One character in particular prevented me from enjoying the book. While the woman herself is a fine addition to the story, the handling of her by the author was extremely racially insensitive. This character is a large, older, female slave named Auntie Jemima. I wish L.A. Meyer had done some research before choosing to name this character. Even reading the article on Wikipedia would have informed him how ignorant and inappropriate his choice was.

While I enjoyed the nods and subtle winks to other literary works which appeared earlier in the series, in this book they seemed out of place and broke the fourth wall. For example, naming a bar in 1800s Cuba “Ric’s Cafe Americain” seemed like a completely out-of-context reference to Casablanca, a movie most of his young adult audience hasn’t seen, which is set in Morocco the 1940s.

The sexual harassment and attempted rape scenes, ever-escalating throughout the series, finally crossed the line of gratuity and crassness into something unfit for the young adult age group. The scene itself could have been excused if there had been any emotional or moral examination of the event, but there is none.

Along with these bizarre additions of cringe-inducing scenes, a lot of the characters I loved in earlier books got very little “page time”. I am thinking specifically of Higgins, who was diluted into a gay Jeeves wannabe, replete with with a “knob polishing” pun. (I kid you not.)

The book is not without its enjoyable parts—I loved the use of the diving bell and Jacky’s interactions with the scientists on board. Meyer’s wonderful ability to describe sea battles was not diminished.

My love for the series up to this point means I will likely still seek out the next book, but I will certainly do so with much less excitement and enthusiasm than I did when I heard “Rapture of the Deep” was being published. If the eighth book does not return to the quality seen in the other Bloody Jack books, I will abandon the series.