Customer Reviews

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists: A Novel

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Oh, to be a pirate captain with a fine luxurious beard,
Spearheadin' an adventure three parts farce and one part weird,
In which Mr. Charles Darwin in a prominent role you'll see,
Amazing all of London with Bobo the Man-panzee.

The evil Bishop of Oxford tries to scupper Darwin's plans,
To show off Bobo's manners, equal to a gentleman's,
This monkey knows which spoon to use, can make a fine cocktail,
So the pirates must assure the Bishop's wicked scheme will fail.

The pirate dressed in green appears, the pirate with the hook,
And the albino pirate cavorts through this funny book,
They live on ham and Cocoa Puffs (and limes to quench their thirsts),
But there's one what dies of scurvy cause he lives on Lime Starbursts.

Oh somewhere folks're reading stuff that's solemn and demure,
But if you've a taste for Python then this book you will prefer,
'Cause nowhere else on God's Green Earth a funnier book you'll see,
What ho, Defoe! Please write some mo'!
'The Pirates!," that's for me!

When they're not belting out a lusty sea shanty or arguing about the best way to prepare ham, there's nothing pirates like more than a rousing adventure. Happily, that's just what's in store for the Pirate Captain and his shipful of variously monikered pirates--the scarf-wearing pirate, the pirate with an accordion, the ill-fated balding archeologist pirate--when they bump into Charles Darwin and his trained monkey Mr. Bobo in the South Pacific. Together, Darwin and the pirates sail off to England to combat the Bishop of Oxford, an evil-mustachioed villain with a diabolical scheme involving the grisly murder of numerous circus-going women. The Pirate Captain may be an unusually gullible scofflaw, and--how to put this nicely--he's not the sharpest cutlass in the drawer, but his peculiar combination of hirsute manliness, keen introspection ("Damn my piratical nature!"), and roguish je ne sais quoi may be just the thing needed to defeat the Oxfordian knave.

Gideon Defoe's exuberant The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists purports to be an account set down some 150 years ago by the debonair Pirate Captain himself--so the Captain's note to readers (specifically, negligee-clad, nineteen-year-old readers) on the back of the book alleges. (Careful readers may doubt the account's historicity, though, given its frequent anachronisms--references to Murder, She Wrote, for example, and Cocoa Puffs. I'll leave it to readers to nitpick.) It comes complete with the occasional footnote, some of the entries very odd indeed: "Black looks best on persons who have black in their features (hair, eyes, brows, and lashes), although black can be worn by most people for very dramatic occasions." There is also a handful of helpful questions for discussion in the back of the book. (For example, number seven: "Scientifically speaking, who do you think the tallest pirate in the world is?")

If it's not clear enough by now, Defoe's Pirates is a hilarious read filled with some extremely clever writing. Not for nothing has Monty Python's Eric Idle blurbed it as "destined to become a classic of pirate comic fiction." You'll want to read this one.

Reviewed by Debra Hamel, author of Trying Neaira: The True Story of a Courtesan's Scandalous Life in Ancient Greece

Part of the fun of reading Gideon Defoe's The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists is picking up on the anachronisms that litter the book like dead lubbers. Some are obvious - Post-It Notes - and some are less so - things in the Natural History Museum in London that will be there long past the year the story takes place [brontosaurus wouldn't make it into the Natural History Museum until at least 50 years after the story takes place]. The basic story goes like this - pirates capture Charles Darwin and the crew of the Beagle and they go to London and have an adventure. If the reader has issues with suspension of disbelief, then this slim volume will be tough going. Some knowledge of pirates and the real people in Darwin's cohort are necessary to get a lot of the jokes [Darwin's pet bulldog in the story is named Huxley]. The humor is very British [although understandable on this side of the pond] and very silly. Although they probably won't have a lot of the background necessary to find it funny, this book is safe for young readers, the worst things in it being very mild innuendo and swear words represented by assorted punctuation marks. This is the type of book you can knock off in a couple of hours on a lazy afternoon while sipping rum in the sun. I doubt it will ever be a bestseller [and it didn't win the author the hand of the young lady he was trying to impress], but if you like pirates, Darwin, and have a sense of humor, you should find the book a short and enjoyable read.

My plumed hat is off to Gideon Defoe for bringing readers a fun, farcical treasure of a book. Fans of Douglas Adams and Jasper Fforde will love this author's work as well.

'Pirates' looks at what happens when a shipful of misfit seadogs is directed towards the richest treasure boat Britain has on the ocean.....the 'H.M.S. Beagle'....'nuff said.

In this book Mr. Defoe gives us a hilarious story, loveable characters *I defy anyone who reads it to NOT fall for the Pirate Captain* and a tongue in cheek sense of the ridiculous that is guarranteed to please. From beginning to end it holds up to its promise and never grows stale.

I give it 2 hooks up and 5 Jolly Rogers.

Funniest book I've read all year! Short & sweet. Monty-Python-esque in its delivery. The footnotes are the best part. Guaranteed to crack you up! Check it out at your local bookstore. Once you pick it up you'll be finished with it anyway...it's that funny and that short!

The humor in this book is so beyond heavy that it becomes light again. I'm not sure how Mr. Defoe can write this stuff without falling over backwards laughing at his own work, but I am seriously happy that he can.

Silly, nonsensical, and wonderous; Pirates! manages to even make fun of the dry (and not so polite) debates around Darwin's theory.

I couln't put it down.

What a small treasure!

The Pirates! can be read in a day, but I purposefully stretched it out to savor the intensely deadpan charisma that Gideon Defoe's story radiates. The book is brimming with quirky characters, silly misadventures, ham, inventive uses of current science, and nods to real-life buccaneers and piratical novels (including the author's own ancestor's, with whom some may be familiar).

Mr. Defoe asserts that the book's origin lay in that of female wooing, and sharp-eyed readers will have fun catching passing references to the mysterious woman; unfortunately the woman was left unimpressed---was it Defoe's use of underhanded semantics, or perhaps the offensive basting of a ham?---, and the author is left with only a published novel and, presumably, any other swooning Londoner that can claim his acquaintance.

Leading the tumultuous troupe is the Pirate Captain who has a peculiar weakness for ham. His very character reminded me of Gilbert and Sullivan's Pirate King (who sinks "a few more ships, it's true, than a well-bred monarch ought to do"!) who has peculiar weaknesses himself (orphans). It's well known that some real-life pirate captains had weaknesses for married men, whose lives would be saved for that very reason! Defoe's Pirate Captain also requires a bit of counsel from his trusty quartermaster, the pirate with a scarf. The two take extensive care to spoil themselves and their fellow knaves with hilarious digressions from their ultimate goal: to rescue Darwin's brother from the nefarious Bishop of Oxford. (There are actually two adversaries in the book!) Of course, how they all join up is half the battle and twice the fun. I was in stitches during a particular episode in which a scientist explains why he switched his airship from helium to hydrogen. I hadn't laughed that hard at a pirate novel since the cannonball "horseplay" in Treasure Island.

Defoe crams the book with footnotes that include scraps of history or random thoughts. The not-so-subtle anachronisms make the read that much more enjoyable, while vaguely alluding to George MacDonald Fraser's genius work, The Pyrates, published 21 years previously. Defoe also kindly includes a comprehension exercise at the end. A jolly book all around, and one that demands many re-reads in the future.

Addendum: Ham is a cut of a hog's thigh. I prefer the center cut steak myself.

The Pirate Captain, a dashing man very fond of ham, attacks The Beagle-thanks to a false tip from Black Bellamy, the pirate with a knife between his teeth-and, finding no treasure, becomes involved in an adventure with the not-yet-famous Darwin. Darwin's brother, Erasmus, has been kidnapped by the "blackhearted Bishop of Oxford" to keep Darwin from exhibiting Mister Bobo, who he (Darwin) has trained to communicate with word cards. The Pirate Captain and his crew return to London to assist Darwin in rescuing Erasmus, a feat which forces all the pirates to pretend to be scientists, and some of them to pretend to be scientists pretending to be women.

What do you mean it doesn't make any sense? It's not supposed to! That's the beauty of this little gem: with one outrageous chapter after another, The Pirates! is full of puns, jokes and allusions. It's purposefully written with no sense of historical accuracy, adding an extra layer of fun, and uses every piratical cliché and stereotype to the fullest humorous advantage. Scurvy, a hot air balloon, ham, a grisly murder machine, swashbuckling, an exciting chase scene in the Museum of Natural History, talking primates, breakfast cereal and pirates! What's not to love?

The Pirates! is Defoe's first novel and, for me, is the best comic novel debut I have ever had to fortune to read. Not only was it hard to put down, but it demanded to be read aloud, first by me to my husband, and then by him back to me as he read it! The book cover says that he "wrote the Pirates! to convince a woman to leave her boyfriend for him. She didn't". I just hope that her failure to follow through won't stop him from writing another Pirate Adventure.

This is one of the few books that I finished really fast. It may be because it is a relatively short novel, but it is also because it is never boring and reading it doesn't require much thinking... not because it doesn't make any sense but because it is very simple (no metaphors) and quite literal (but not shallow), and also the text itself is just purely entertaining. One thing I felt as I was reading was that it made me really hungry for an actual escapade!

Of course, I have other good reasons for liking The Pirates! this much. Not only is it very funny, it is also intellectual. The author provides information on things that readers would probably be interested in, mostly day-to-day life activities, like why our fingers wrinkle every time we stay in the bath too long. I actually found it really clever of him to do that. The characters of this book have some personality that would make you like them a lot, especially the Pirate Captain. I also like his favorite comrade, the pirate with a scarf. It was also enjoyable to have Charles Darwin, Robert Fitzroy, and the Bishop of Oxford as characters, because in this novel the author made it possible to see them in another light; the not so serious kind of light... and it was really entertaining because in textbooks all there is to them are their importance to science and religion. This work of fiction would enable readers to see that maybe after all, these great people did have a comedic side.

And of course, it was always easy to picture the scenarios playing in your head. Along with it, you'll smile and laugh for sure!

I would have to praise the author, Mr. Defoe for having a really imaginative mind. I'm sure that if Charles Darwin and Robert Fitzroy were alive now, they would have been the ones to cast themselves as characters in this story before they're even asked! If you're looking for books to read during your free time or vacant time, The Pirates! will fill that idle time of yours and turn it into a funny adventure!

When the book jacket says you wrote a book to try and steal a girl away from another guy, you better have written a gut-wrenching romantic novel, suspense filled drama, or outrageously hilarious story. Gideon Defoe took door number 3. This book on The Pirates! is uproariously funny. I had people staring at me as I laughed so hard. We join the adventures of the Pirate Captain, the pirate with a scarf, the pirate who wears green, the albino pirate, the pirate with an accordian, the pirate that wears red, the pirate with a hook for a hand, the pirate who is a jock ... and Charles Darwin (along with Mister Bobo and the Bishop of Oxford [toss in a sidetrip to a PT Barnum circus with the Elephant Man]). The outrageousness is Monty Python/Simpsons-esque with referals to items and events that take place nowhere/nowhen near the time the adventure takes place including things like Post-It notes, refrigerator magnets, Starburst, the periodic tables with atomic weights, brontosaurus skeleton in the Natural History Museum (50 years before it happened). Intermixed with this highly amusing tale are footnotes with actual real trivia info like the pending extinction of bananas and helium. Defoe also makes references to past Pirates! adventures (The Pirates! in an adventure with cowboys/steep hill/dinosaurs/...) that may or may not be forthcoming. This could be a long lived series, one which I will gladly gather for my own amusement. Biggest complaint... far far too short, it's only 133 pages and you'll read it in 2-3 hours.