A few months ago, a friend threw down a challenge, to "read something completely out of your comfort zone and report back."

My contribution: Young Nick's Head, written by Karen Hesse, published in 2001 by Simon & Schuster. (In the US, this book is entitled Stowaway.) It's Historical Fiction, well outside my regular cycle of books.

"Young Nick" of the title is Nicholas Young, aged 11 at the start of the tale. He's running away from an unhappy life, and stows away on the ship Endeavour, setting sail to observe the transit of Venus in Tahiti in 1770. Captain Cook then opens orders to chart the coast of New Zealand, and sail back via the East Indies.

The book takes the form of a journal, written from Nick's perspective. This brings up a few problems: the choice of words is not authentic for the mid 1700s, and Nick appears to be writing from someone well into their teens. It doesn't quite ring true, falling into the same trap as Dawson's Creek - Nick uses vocabulary and idioms far beyond his years.

Hesse's imagination has built a consistent sketch of Nick's life before he joined the ship, but she never fleshes out that sketch. There's Father, there's a Butcher, there's the theft of money to bribe his way onto the ship, but that's all.

The other characters on the ship are also two-dimensional cartoon characters. Mr Bootie is evil, Master Molyneux a plonker, Mr Banks an intelligent cypher. In part, this is the way a chap of his age would see the world; in part, this is slapdash writing.

There is character progression, but it's not clear if Nick's resolve by the end of the book is relief at surviving a dangerous voyage, or a genuine maturity.

Hesse provides some notes at the back of the book, stating what is fact, what is fiction, and describing her sources. Nick was a real person, and did do some of the actions ascribed to him, but the rest is speculation. It feels like rough speculation.

To give credit where it's due, Young Nick's Head is a page turner, and there was never a point where I wanted to leave the volume unfinished. It wasn't in the remainder shop from the second printing for no reason, and I can't see myself picking up any more volumes from Hesse.