By Gideon Defoe
Published by Pantheon Books, 2004
Price: $15.95
I was putting a new edition of Dickens's Pickwick Papers on my bookshelf when I noticed this tiny book sitting next to its spot. I remember back in the day when the Pirates! series was a bestseller but I think anyone nowadays recalls nothing about it. This copy still has a tagger on it saying I bought it in January 2006! So it had been sitting on my shelves for 16 years before I finally got around to reading it. I have to say, I wasn't missing much.
The main character of The Pirates! is a pirate captain known only as.....Pirate Captain. Of course, he likes booty but his main preoccupation is taking care of his luxuriously oiled beard. The Pirate Captain believes his crew is growing soft from an extended layover so he is on the search for a big score to get them back on track. So he jumps at the chance when a rival pirate captain named Black Bellamy tells him about a ship carrying a hundred weight in gold bullion. That's where the scientists come in. The tale of a gold ship is a trick. The ship is actually the Beagle which is carrying a young Charles Darwin. But no matter, the pirates volunteer to help Darwin to rescue his brother from the evil Bishop of Oxford in London and they are off on a wacky adventure.
If you read the book jacket of this tiny novel it sounds fun. And I guess it kinda was. It's so short and tiny you could read it in a hour or so....and then you will have forgotten it. You might get a chuckle out of it, or a smirk, but there's really nothing uproariously funny. If i was locked in a room with only this Pirates! series available to pass the time, would i read the other books? Yes. In the real world with so many good authors to read, is it worth the time to continue reading this series? No.
My Grade: C
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