Once Upon a Bookshelf

The Story

It is 1808, and the middle of the Napoleonic Wars. First Lieutenant Heironymus Bonaventure serves on the HMS Fortitude. After a run-in with a Spanish frigate and a horrendous storm, the Fortitude finds an island paradise repair serious damage to their ship. When they come across a couple of members of the Spanish crew, only to learn of a madness that has effected the remainder of the Spanish crew on a neighbouring island. But the native people of this island paradise warn only of how the island is forbidden, and is the home of fire and death.

The Review

Hmm. This wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as I had hoped it was going to be.

I was hoping for something that would cross Horatio Hornblower with fantasy. It was more like Robinson Crusoe with fantasy elements (and a lot more characters stranded on the island).

The characters lacked depth, there was nothing that made me care about any of them. And their relationships didn’t feel as developed as they should have been seeing as the characters had been stuck on a ship together for months on end with each other.

Then there was the ending, which was a bit anticlimactic and rushed. I expected more than the group of crew and islanders seeing the monsters, attempting to fight them for a little bit and then retreating. Especially for the islanders – this is supposed to be a trial where they can show their courage and their worth, and yet they’re going to have to live with knowing that they ran away from the danger – it didn’t feel consistent with who they were at all.

The one bright spot in the book was Giles Dulac, the man who teaches Bonaventure how to fence. I blame this on Ellen Kushner’s The Privilege of the Sword, which has made me have a bit of love for characters who fight with swords. Sadly, he was only really around for four chapters, all of which were looks back into Bonaventure’s past. And I really wish we had explored Dulac more – there was so much more to him, including his relationship with a friend from army days. Hmm.

The Bottom Line

Overall, it was alright, but nothing super-special. It had the potential to be more than it was, but unfortunately, for me, it fell a little flat.

Other Reviews

Neth Space, Fantasy Book Critic. Have you reviewed this book on your blog? Let me know and I’ll add your link.

I picked up this book in the bargain section of Chapters about a year ago, and it’s been sitting on my self since then. I really really wish I had read this before now. Really wish that.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists was originally written to impress a girl, apparantely. From what I can see, this is the first of Defoe’s books, even though it references other adventures The Pirates have been on. In this particular story, The Pirates sale to the Galapagos Islands in search of adventure. In search of gold, actually. Instead of gold, they meet Charles Darwin. However, Darwin is not doing the whole evolution deal, but is actually training the first Man-panzee. A monkey that he’s dressed in human clothes, domesticized, and taught how to communicate with the use of flash cards.

The church wants to keep this Man-panzee stuff all hush-hush, because of the Bishop’s nefarious plans – plans to take the essence from beautiful young women so that he can always look young and beautiful.

Of course, once The Pirates friend young Darwin, and learn about the Bishop’s schemes, they set out on an adventure to help Darwin introduce his Man-panzee to London society.

The cover of this book proclaimed it to be similar to Blackadder. I could not disagree with that one bit. If there was a season of Blackadder about pirates, I could easily see some of these events happening. Absolutely hilarious, it was. So many funny parts. It was both snarky and very smart humour. And I loved the different spin that it had to Darwin and why Darwin was sailing tothe Galapagos Islands.

It was a little disconcerting at first that none of The Pirates had actual names, but by the time a few chapters passed, I didn’t really notice that much anymore. Unusually for me, I loved this book even though I didn’t particularly care for any of the characters. Don’t get me wrong – they’re funny and I like them, but none of them really stuck out in my mind. The only one with a real personality was the Pirate Captain himself. Surprisingly, that didn’t take away from the enjoyment of the book.

A few of my favourite quotes are as follows. The first is when the Pirate Captain has one of his crew dress up in a sheet and pretend to be the Holy Ghost, in order to trick the Bishop into confessing:

‘That’s not the Holy Ghost,’ snorted the Bishop dismissively.

‘Yes it is!’ said the Pirate Captain, a bit put out. ‘Look how tall he is! He’s a giant! And he’s covered in a sheet! Just like it describes him in the Bible.’

‘The Bible says nothing of the kind. Where on earth did you get the idea that the Holy Ghost is a giant? He’s the same size as Jesus. That’s the point – he’s just a creepier version of Christ.’

‘Are you sure?’ frowned the Captain, wondering if his research had let him down. ‘Doesn’t he fight Goliath at some point? I’m sure he does. He throws a leper at his face.’

The second is when the Pirate Captain comes across one of the members of his crew, who just happeend to die of scurvy:

‘What’s up with this swab?’ asked the Pirate Captain, nudging him with the toe of his shiny pirate boot.

‘He died of scurvy, sir,’ said the pirate with a scarf.

‘Aaaarrr. I hope that’s proved a useful lesson to you. Ham is all well and good, but make sure you get your vitamins! Scurvy is no laughing matter,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘Except in those rare instances when a fellow’s head swells up like a gigantic lemon,’ he added as an afterthougth. ‘Which I grant can bring a smile even to my salty old face.’

As you can see, it is quite amusing. There were so many passages that I wish I had gone through and marked off for myself to easily find again. But in all honesty, there were just SO MANY that I could pretty much open up almost any page and find something that will make me laugh.

The Bottom Line: DEFINITELY a winner. I was snorting and laughing out loud over this, and am interested in Defoe’s other books. Would highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys stuff like Monty Python, Blackadder and the like.

Silver is the story of Long John Silver (the pirate from Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island). Written as a series of letters from Silver to the captain who has taken over his ship and is conveying him to London for his hanging, this book tells the story of how Silver became a pirate, how he discovered the treasure in Treasure Island, and where his treasure is now hidden.

This book certainly was not what I had expected it to be. Especially with the title being what it is. When I think about books about pirates, I think about swashbuckling, pillaging and plundering. This book was certainly none of those things – certainly it did mention treasure numerous times (this is Long John Silver, after all) but not until later on in the book. When there was murder, or fighting, or even looting, it was mentioned in an offhanded way most of the time. The first half of the book was very dry and very slow – it tells about how Silver started off as an orphan living on the streets as a pick-pocket, when he was working in a tavern where he originally met Black John, when he was learning to become a pirate, when he finally murdered Black John and became captain of the Linda Maria.

The narration itself took a good long time to get used to as well. The book is written for the most part as if Long John Silver had been writing a memoir or letters of sorts for the sake of the captain who was holding him captive, but it is randomly intersperced with conversation between Silver and his captor’s cabin boy in what would be real-time for Silver. It came across as distracting at first, breaking up the flow, but by the end of the book, I thoroughly appreciated the way it was written, as it gave more depth to both the cabin boy and Silver’s captor. Another thing that I found to be distracting about the narration is that there would be bouts when Silver would be spouting stuff that didn’t relate to the story – he was getting sick, and would succumb to fevers and at times there were feverish ramblings in his letters. I suppose it shows us more of Silver’s character, but it seemed… unnecessary.

There were a couple of “twists” at the end of the book. I use the term extremely loosely, as I had figured one out about halfway through the book. The other though, definitely came as a surprise. At the end of the book, as well as partway through the book, Silver mentioned that the location of his treasure is mentioned in his writings, and so I’m debating going back and rereading to see if I can figure out where the treasure is… but I had such a hard time getting through the first half the first time around and so the idea is not really too appealing to me right now. Maybe at a later date.

While there were many times that I was debating whether or not to actually finish this book, in the end I’m happy I did. I think it was around this quote in the book that made me want to keep with it until the end. At this point, I think I finally understood Long John Silver:

“And what does it matter if we are the only two left alive to tell each other the tale? We still had our adventure. And what if only one of us lives? That man will still bear the tale, even if he speaks it aloud to himself in the night. Even in a Spanish jail before his hanging. No one can ever take it away. It is an adventure, lad.”