Customer Reviews

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists: A Novel

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

First off, I shall not endeavor to give a plot summary because Mr. Defoe's wacky works defy description & his best literary weapon is the surprising concepts he weaves together into a (I'd say a tapestry, but they're too short, so I'll have to say) vest of absurdity.

In some ways, The Pirates! in an adventure with Communists! is actually better than the first novel in this series. The writing has become a bit more polished, the footnotes more witty, and the humor is just as absurdly funny as the first. (I thought the second adventure with Whaling was a bit of a let-down compared to their adventure with Scientists.)

While nothing can top the line about Dino-pirates being their worst fear, this book has great moments involving suspicious Valkyries and pretend sacks of kittens - and even the concept of singing bears is just too hilarious to contemplate. (Personal favorite line in this entry into The Pirates! oeuvre is the one about Nietzche's theory on Spinoza's love life.)

(As a bonus, Defoe caters to the font geeks among us & uses fonts to define personality.)

So, don't wait around, buy this book! It's absurd, it's brashly anachronistic and it's less than the price of a really cheap ham!

Our third voyage with the pirates! This time wtih communists! Our journey begins in London and ends in Paris with the hearty crew. Back again are the pirate with a scarf, the pirate with gout, the pirate with a hook for a hand, the pirate who wore red, the pirate who wore green... and Jennifer. We also get to meet the pirate who likes kittens and the pirate with bedroom eyes. All lead by our evidently philisophical Pirate Captain. They hook up with Engels & Karl Marx (who evidently looks just like the Pirate Captain but hairier). Throw in some statuesque blondes, Wagner operas, and a mysterious fog-shrouded giant and your off on another romp! Add in some philosiphizing and there ya go. Did I mention you learn how to play Pop-Up Pirate?

this book is one in a series of highlarious rides on the bounding mane of comedy writing.
all things piratical, all things comical.
a quick read with lots of guffaws.

I highly recommend The Pirates! series to anyone with a sense of humor. All of the novels are excellent and we can't get enough of them. I only wish there were more!

This is my first Pirates! book, but hopefully it won't be the last. I greatly enjoyed the absurdity of the Pirate Captain meets Marx meets Wagner meets Nietzche premise, but did feel there were a few too many sly self-aware winks and nudges to the reader. These mostly came in the footnotes, which are not at all essential to the plot. If DeFoe can reign in this tendency a bit, he'd have a much wittier finished book.

Yet another excellent book by Defoe - funny, witty, sly, silly and above all, uproarious fun - I can't recommend this, or Defoe's other two, highly enough. I'm anxiously awaiting the release of his next book!

Defoe is like Monty Python reincarnated...then stuck on a theme, that theme being pirates of course. It's ridiculously funny!

I've never laughed out loud while reading until I came across Defoes' Pirate books. If you are a fan of Monty Pythons and other similiar british humor, you will love these books.

Maybe the best in the series (and educational; best way to attract a girl, beard pomades, political ideology). Funny and wonderful - can't wait for the next 27 volumes.

This was a great book! Gideon Defoe is so randomly great! Totally worth the buy!