'Good historical novels fascinate me, and this is one of the best I have read recently - a first novel by a young journalist with an eye for a great yarn . . . Written with compelling and ruthless originality'
Magnus Magnusson, The Week
'A compelling and utterly original story of shipwreck, madness and evil. It is written in a gorgeous prose which vividly evokes its distant historical moment and the exotic desolation of its setting, and it features a splendidly ruthless villain. A fine, dark novel'
Patrick McCrath
'Rape, murder, torture and arsenic - that's the stuff real villains are made of, and in the form of Jeronimus Cornelisz we have an arch/villain worth remembering ... The frisson of truth behind his awesome depravity lends real horror to the unfurling story ... A truly nasty piece of work'
Arena