The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, a review
Last week’s blog was about an uncommon well…misfire; I guess is a good word. I couldn’t get into the book I was reading, and I tried a couple times. This week, I decided to start with a rather short read. It was like getting back on my feet (reading feet?) so-to-speak.
As I perused the library on my last visit, I happened upon this tiny book. I thought that the book was an oddity; a lot of the others in my library are quite large in comparison. I pulled it off the shelf to look at its cover. Its title, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists and crazy cover (featuring a monkey, sea monsters, and a scantily clad woman) drew me in.
Another thing that caught my attention was a blurb on the cover. Written by none other than former member of the comedy troupe, Monty Python, Eric Idle! He said it was, “destined to become a classic of pirate comic fiction”. I’d never read any other pirate comic fiction, so this absurd blurb sealed it for me. I picked it up, and was eager to start reading.
Wow! That sure was a lot to say about book discovery.
The book itself, penned by Gideon Defoe, really is absurd (in a good way). The group of pirates referenced in the title serves as the main characters. They are lead by a dashing captain aptly named Pirate Captain. Other characters, aside from the pirates include an antagonist pirate named Black Bellamy, Charles Darwin, a gentleman Man-Panzee named Mr.Bobo, and Darwin’s nemesis (in the novel) the Bishop of Oxford.
The story focuses on the pirate crew, as I said, and is quite silly. The ham-loving pirate crew is bored, and looking for something to do. Pirate Captain receives a message from his enemy, Black Bellamy. It seems that Bellamy wants to mend his ways, and invites the pirate crew to a feast on his ship.
When Bellamy learns that Pirate Captain and his crew are looking for an adventure, he tells him that there is a ship from the Bank of England that is carrying a load of money. Pirate Captain hastens to the coordinates that Bellamy gives him, and begins to attack the ship.
It turns out that this ship is the Beagle, the ship that Charles Darwin traveled to the Galapagos Islands on. When Pirate Captain learns that he attacked a ship full of scientists, he sees that Black Bellamy was still up to no good.
Darwin, who has been traveling on the Beagle because he was cast out of England due to his beliefs, meets the pirate crew he tells them of his problems. It seems that Darwin trained a chimpanzee to act as a gentleman (a Man Panzee), and this creature had drawn the ire of the Bishop of Oxford. The Bishop has kidnapped Darwin’s brother Erasmus, and will kill him unless Darwin stops his experiments.
Darwin convinces Pirate Captain and the pirate crew to help him find his brother. The group travels to England, to find that the Bishop of Oxford has set up a devious plot to drain the women of England of their life force, to keep himself from aging. They must stop the Bishop and save Erasmus in the process!
What I love about the pirates themselves is that very few of them actually have names. Aside from Pirate Captain, the other pirates are actually described rather than named. There is the pirate with the scarf (Pirate Captain’s right-hand man), the pirate in green, the pirate in red, and so on.
The story’s pacing is quick. It’s rather short, but full of so many hilarious moments that you don’t notice that it might be lacking. There are constant references to other adventures that the pirate crew has been on (much like how Tarquin Hall references the other cases that Vish Puri has been on in The Case of the Missing Servant) and I would like to see some of them come to fruition.
Defoe has already written two others, one of which has already been publish. The other will be released this year (I think). I really enjoyed the book for what it was, a zany adventure. It really is reminiscent of Monty Python sketches, and I highly recommend it. Especially if you are someone who is a fan of absurdity.
