Customer Reviews

The Barbary Pirates: An Ethan Gage Adventure (Ethan Gage Adventures)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

William Dietrich's fourth installment of the adventures of American envoy and spy Ethan Gage, who tends to be a bit like Captain Jack Sparrow in the sense that is loyalities tend to lie with whoever offers the best deal, comes back strong after a weak third book that had me a little disappointed in Ethan's future.

Barbary Pirates finally wraps up some loose ends with the explanation of why Ethan has been led on a merry chase around the globe since the onset of book one, finding ancient artifacts that are being hunted down by the mysterious cult group The Egyptian Rite. Ethan's trails have led him to find Egyptian amulets, Rosetta Keys, and Thor's Hammer, all at the behest of none other than Napoleon Bonaparte. We also get to witness Ethan's reunion with his beloved Astiza whom he fell in love with in Napoleon's Pyramid, that offers up one heck of a surprise for our fumbling spy and allows us to see a different warmer and more responsible aspect of Ethan's personality that up to now tended to be quite fickle and carefree.

Napoleon has a new quest for Ethan and promises him he will help find Astiza if he accomplishes his newest mission. For Ethan, Napoleon has been both friend and foe, but has no choice but to once again bow and obey when Bonaparte retells the legend of Archimedes Death Ray war weapon, telling Gage he believes it exists on the Greek Island we now call Santorini, and also thought to be the lost island of Atlantis.

This book is packed full of great action, lots of humor, and an abundance of the usual mishaps and madcap adventures we can expect from Dietrich's Ethan Gage novels. Swashbuckling sword fights, duels and explosions, torturous dungeons and sensuous Pirate Queens, all make Barbary Pirates a fine installment, if not maybe the grand finale of this series. I love the first two books, didn't care for book three, but am very happy to say this fourth book for me was the best of the four with the grandest adventure and the one that made me laugh and smile the most.

William Dietrich's Barbary Pirates is the 4th book of the Ethan Gage series but the first that I've read. As a person very into the Barbary wars and the US navy of the time it seemed an excellent fit.

The book leaps from brothels, to Islands, to scantily clad women with grenades at a breakneck pace that really doesn't seem like a book. If you are looking for character development you have come to the wrong place, it is action, action and more action at a pace that doesn't slow up.

It read more like a screenplay than a book. I could actually see the film scenes in my head, how they would be shot, the film angles, the blasts and the dives. Pirate ships, ancient tombs, a bit of a love story and of course a mad woman with a vicious animal and Robert Fulton.

You would think that it would be a book I couldn't put down, you would be wrong. By about page 100 it reached the point where it was impossible to suspend the disbelief that is necessary for something like this to work. I found myself having to force myself to go back to the book in order to finish it.

I'm sure in a few years it will be a movie and as a movie the pace might work, but as a novel it just seemed trite.

All that being said there are some cool characters and fun moments. If the reader had a chance to breathe he might be able to appreciate them, but Dietrich give you no time to breathe, the next bomb has to go off and its time for everyone to run.

Maybe I would have liked it more if I read the previous books, but I don't know if I have the stamina for it.

It's not a bad book, I'm glad I read it but I've gotta tell you, it's like reading reading Richard Sharpe with ADHD.

Bristling pirates, the blue Aegeon Sea, and a lost underground city nestled in the bosom of an ancient volcanic island. Hold on to your butts! I'm afraid he's back..."The Barbary Pirates" is Pulitzer-Prize-winning William Dietrich's fourth entry in the Ethan Gage marathon(after "The Dakota Cipher"). It continues the saga of our intrepid hero, who's now in Paris, in 1802, with his three savants, British geologist William Smith, French zoologist George Cuvier, and fellow American Robert Fulton, who invented the submarine. Gage's cronies are well armed. One has a blunderbuss, and another has just purchased a boxed set of two shiny, silver dueling pistols. Good. Adversity lies ahead. Emperor Napoleon engages all four to travel to Greece, and confound the whispers about the fabled mirror of Archimedes, a fantastic prop that can emit a death ray. Gage's old nemesis, the Egyptian Rite, a ruthless gang, is also in on the race to find the death machine. From Paris to the Mediterranean, Gage hooks up with British tigress Lady Aurora, Egyptian lover Astiza, and of course, a few pirates. In the end, Gage finds himself aboard the submarine. Somewhat predictable, and not as good as "The Dakota Cipher", "Pirates" is still a lively read; swarming with action, loaded with aphorisms. Still just looking for a job, Ethan Gage is caught up in the adventure, and he's intrigued by the medieval past, the bastion of historical truth. His quest is leading him back, "back into the fog when time began". "The Barbary Pirates" includes quotes from the scientist Archimedes, and old Ben Franklin as well. "We get old too soon and wise too late..."

This is my first Ethan Gage novel and I have to admit if the others are like this I won't be going back for more. I like the idea behind the story, blending a little adventure with some history, but don't think it was executed the way I had hoped. The characters are all overused stereotypes that are underdeveloped, leaving the reader not really caring what happens to any of them. The story jumps from implausible situation to implausible situation a little too quickly, not really allowing for absorption of what is happening, either by the reader or any of the characters in the book. You would think that all this non-stop adventure would make this book impossible to put down . . . but that wasn't the case. It was a struggle to connect with any of it, it was so unbelievable and not at all engaging with the characters. The thing that irritated me most about this book was the way the author would be telling the story and then suddenly switch to some internal monologue of Ethan Gage then right back to the action. The writing just didn't flow well at all for me. The Gage character has some witty things to say, takes his crummy luck in stride but there just wasn't enough there for me to get super involved or feel very invested in this story. I can see the appeal of this if you are looking for a silly sort of escape, light beach read type book, but for someone looking for more history than adventure I would keep looking.

Anyone? I first came across William Dietrich's work a few years ago, reading his books 'The Scourge of God' and 'Hadrian's Wall', both of which were very good. He then introduced Ethan Gage... and he was fantastic, for a while. I loved 'Napoleons Pyramids' and couldn't put down 'The Rosetta Key'(I actually took a sick day to read it). These first two Ethan Gage novels were fantastic, top notch adventures. Then something changed. With 'The Dakota Cipher', Ethan Gage as a character completely changed. Gone were his witty one liners, to be replaced by an overall prepossessing pompousness and a whinny attitude. It was a real struggle to finish it. One detail that especially stuck out for me was the was Dietrich had Gage completely dumbfounded by a tornado, presenting it as a force of nature that was unheard of. Tornados are commonplace in the Eastern US as well! He may never had seen one in person, but he certainly would have heard of one.

The trend continued in this latest edition of Ethan Gage. For lack of better words, William Dietrich has turned Gage from a lovable rouge of a character, to a pompous horses ass. The story line was fantastic, but alas I could not finish this one, not even the promise of reuniting with Astiza could see me through. After reading the first 100 pages I returned it to Amazon for a refund.

The only thing I can think is William Dietrich has seen the $$$ that his series could bring and he has amended his once superb writing style to that of a Hollywood screenwriter in hopes of his books being picked up as a 19th Century Indiana Jones. In any case, he has lost me as a fan. Maybe one day he'll return to the top of his game, until then we can only hope.

I'll confess I didn't make it past page 125 of The Barbary Pirates. I'm a big fan of Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey and Maturin series and I was hoping for something a little more along those lines and less like The X Files or The DaVinci Code. It became clear that the novel is not very interested in historical accuracy, but is of the type that uses history as a colorful backdrop and takes liberties where it wills. I'm all for swashbuckling adventure and I love historical novels that really dig into a particular milieu, showing the author has done his or her scholarly research to get the details right. But frankly I'm not interested in spiritualism and the occult, nor in Templar conspiracies, Egyptian Rite mysteries, legends of Atlantis, and pseudo-scholarly attempts to prove that "myths of ancient gods actually refer to early beings who somehow taught mankind how to grow, build and write, and by doing so lifted us out of the mud." If that's your cup of tea, however, you'll probably love The Barbary Pirates.

I have read each and every one of this series......all I can say is that ..."I could not wait to put this down..."


very trite.....too cute for words....not worth the effort to read completely....

I thought I would like this title, but I just could not get into it. I tried several times, but I never could get past page 50. I had wanted to like the book -- I found the premise interesting -- but I found the writing to be unapproachable.

This book is a light historical adventure set in the early 19th century that works characters and events from history into the plot. The hero and narrator, Ethan Gage, is a treasure-hunter/adventurer with charisma and a knack for getting into trouble. The Barbary Pirates is the fourth book in the Ethan Gage series. I haven't read any of the prior books.

I picked up this book because the most common complaint from other reviewers on Amazon was that the novel "read like a screenplay" - and I was looking for something fast-paced, full of action, and fun.

Well, the book did have a lot of action - with chases, escapes, injuries, close calls, and major revelations every few pages - but somehow it just didn't feel fast-paced and fun. The whole book sounds as if, after three previous rollicking adventures, Ethan Gage is simply bored by action. His blasé attitude made me feel a little bored too.

On the other hand, the writing was better than I expected.

Overall, it was... okay.

I love the way this author inserts historical figures into his stories. I enjoyed the surprises that this latest Gage tale had to offer. No spoilers, you'll have to read it for yourself. Gage has more lives then the luckiest cat that has ever walked the earth.