The Pirate Queen by Ariel Lawhon

This is an infuriating book. So much so that I didn’t finish it. Don’t get me wrong; I love the idea of The Pirate Queen. Telling the life story of Gráinne Ní Mháille is an excellent premise for some rip-roaring historical fiction. It’s even got an interesting structure alternating between three different parts of her life. I was pleasantly surprised when I cracked open the book to find a small pronunciation guide to some Irish words in the front matter. It would be nice to have some Gaeilge scattered throughout the narrative. But that’s exactly what made this book so infuriating. First off all, by dropping in an occassional Irish word into a sentence, it just made me think, “Wait, what language would these people be speaking?” Usually the answer was Irish. In which case, why translate one arbitrary word? Then there’s the choice of the Irish word that gets dropped into the text most frequently… The front matter has this to say about the irish word tá: An affirmative statement similar…