The Pirates!: In an Adventure with the Romantics (Vintage Original) (edition 2012)

A thousand times better than Polidori's "The Vampyr." Though that really isn't saying much if you, like me, have ever had the misfortune to read that story. But certainly the best in the Pirates series to date. I mean what's not to love about the pirates and the Romantics together! It's as if Gideon Defoe (and I still doubt the veracity of that name) wrote this book just for me.

As always, I think I scared people with my laughter during my commute to work. The laughter comes not just from the downright silliness of the book (and footnotes) but from the wonderful in jokes for anyone who knows both pirates and Romantics (Castle Ruthven, hah!). And since I've spent much of my life studying both (I'm not PirateJenny for absolutely no reason and Byron just happens to be my favorite poet), I was in heaven. Plus the fact that the only recurring character with a name is Jennifer and she and Byron get rather close, well, that obviously sealed it. ( )

So. Funny. I've loved all of The Pirates! books, and this was another shining gem. I read most of this on a train and probably startled several people around me because I kept having to stifle laughing incredibly hard. This adventure is light, silly, funny, and most of all fun. ( )

Brilliant

Return of the inimitable Pirates! In another crazy adventure

We start off in Switzerland with the Pirate captain visiting the bank looking to extend his overdraft (yes the pirate ship is on the lake). But Switzerland is deadly dull and Byron (yes that Byron) is tempted to commit suicide to liven things up.

“Are you sure it’s the right address?”
“Villa Diodati” said the pirate with the scarf, “that’s what it says on the gate”
“You don’t think some other coves beat us to it do you, number 2? Neptune’s lips! I hope it wasn’t those confounded cowboys, peddling their idiotic Stetson and cactus based adventures!”

Luckily the Pirates turn up and sweep the Romantics (Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin & Byron) off for an adventure, picking up the dour Charles Babbage along the way.

You realize that sailing from Switzerland to London is more geographically challenging than it sounds?

Defoe has obviously done lots of research and then discarded most of it in favour of his special brand of silliness, running gags galore and erudite and amusing footnotes. With a few excepts from Byron’s fanzine Young, brooding & doomed and writing lessons from the Pirate captain to Mary Godwin and much much more.

Overall – The fifth Pirates! Book. Read it, but read the first four first… ( )

You haven't heard of The Pirates! series? splutters incoherently.

These short, sublimely bonkers books which are nothing short of hilarious. They are filled with irreverent looks at history, literature and pop culture and they delight in messing with various tropes, genres and your head. We have had Darwin and Ahab mocked, Victorian society and now the Romantics and um monster movies.

Early next morning the pirate with a scarf found the Pirate Captain pacing back and forth across his cabin, like a hairy metronome, or a sad polar bear. So far as anybody could tell, they still weren’t on an adventure, and the Captain was worried that if a grisly murder or a woman with flashing eyes didn’t turn up soon then the Romantics might start to have second thoughts about the entire business.

This time Byron, Percy & Mary Shelly meet up with the Pirates to seek adventure! (Switzerland is boring) They join
up with Charles Babbage to seek Plato's lost work on how to pull girls and end up in trying to track it down in Dracula's lair..

Her eyes lit up like candles - that being the one of the only things that eyes could light up like before Edison

Yes it is silly, it is childish but it’s very very very funny. Defoe knows many facts (and discards most of them), full of
fascinating footnotes, running gags, amusing drawings and a index that bears no relation to the book but tells it's own story. It manages to mock Victoriana, science and romanticism all in one and I devoured it in an afternoon and it managed to cheer me up no end. Humour is so hard to review and this book hard to quote on as the jokes are built so well, so I urge to try a bit here: http://www.gideondefoe.com/page17.htm

Babbage’s three laws of difference engines
First law: A difference engine must have at least six cogs.
Second law: A difference engine must be able to operate a loom.
Third law: A difference engine must be able to kill a man, should the mood take it.

Recommend for anyone in need of cheering up or maybe try the 1st one (although you don’t have to really) [The Pirates! in an Adventure with Scientists]. Yes it was an Aardman film (very good btw) but the humours is quite different so go check it out.

Anyway last word is Mr Defoe's
Women in diaphanous nighties running down corridors! Brooding men with dark hair! Ghostly banging noises! A bit where the Pirate Captain dresses up as a sexy fireman! The fifth book in the Pirates series contains all of that, and as a special bonus comes with the semblance of an actual plot.

Go read. ( )