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Title: The Pyrates: A Swashbuckling Comic Novel by the Creator of Flashman by George MacDonald Fraser ISBN: 1-58574-800-5 Publisher: The Lyons Press Pub. Date: July, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.64 (11 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: I wish I had written this!
Comment: I am a huge fan of Fraser's "Flashman" series, and have enjoyed "Mr. American" and "Black Ajax" as well. "Pyrates" only enhanced my appreciation for this author. It is one of the few books I have ever read that actually made me laugh out loud. It is hilarious from start to finish, especially the side comments from the pirate "greek chorus" at different spots throughout the book. You don't have to be a fan of swashbucklers to like this story. You just need to enjoy well-written, well-crafted, and unbelievably witty writing. Thank you, Mr. Fraser...you are a master of your craft. I know you wrote this book while working on screenplays for Hollywood -- any chance THIS story will ever become a movie? We can only hope!
Rating: 4
Summary: Wonderful!
Comment: Someone else wrote a review and expressed the same sentiment I have. This would make a wonderful movie. I picked up a Pan edition (U.K.) several years ago and have read it a half-dozen times.
This is as much a book about Pirates as Home Game (by Paul Quarington) was a book about baseball.
We have the perfect hero in Captain Avery. Virtuous, handsome, and painfully "perfect". And the perfect anti-hero in Captain Blood. Rakish, clever, and a rogue. Mix in a cast of characters you would find in every b-movie Pirate flick, and throw in a Monty Pythonesque sense of the absurd and you will end up with The Pyrates.
Fun from beginning to end.
Rating: 4
Summary: The funniest pirate movie never filmed
Comment: Author George MacDonald Fraser, the accomplished British author of the FLASHMAN PAPERS and the Private McAuslan trilogy, has also toiled as a Hollywood scriptwriter. And he's been fascinated by pirate stories all his life. Thus, in THE PYRATES, the reader is treated to what could serve as the script for the funniest, most outrageous buccaneer saga ever not put on film.
The hero of THE PYRATES is Captain Ben Avery, RN, the handsomest, most chivalrous, noblest, most incorruptible, bravest, most dutiful, and most unseducible man ever to wield an officer's sword on behalf of His Majesty. In Avery, as with every other of the novel's characters, Fraser has lovingly created a caricature. In any case, the time is "the old and golden days of England". King Charles occupies the throne. Ben is ordered to secretly convey a priceless crown to the King of Madagascar. On the same outbound ship are Admiral Lord Rooke and his gorgeous daughter Vanity. Of course, seafaring rascals capture the vessel, steal the crown, abandon Ben on a sandspit, and sell Vanity into white slavery. The tabloids (!) blame Avery for the debacle, and the remainder of the book has our superhero valiantly struggling to rescue honor, crown and Vanity from assorted scoundrels and near things. Of course, even the villains are occasionally endearing, especially if they're British, e.g. Colonel Blood, RA (Cashiered), a darker version of Avery without the ethics or meticulous dress code. And, needless to say, Captain Ben is besotted with Vanity, though his appreciation for her considerable charms is entirely platonic, anything more prurient unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.
Since a small movie plays in my mind whenever I read fiction, the chief delight of this swashbuckling caper is the way Fraser attaches period-piece incongruities to the plot which result in hilarious "sight gags" and other absurdities. Contemplate the following: laundry chutes in a Spanish galleon, meal-seating announcements aboard a pirate ship, buccaneers getting drunk and rowdy on captured Perrier, eau de cologne by the barrel or the handy bucket size, a pirate chief's stock portfolio, the deplorable lack of Kleenex in a fetid orlop prison, shipboard ruffians being entertained by a puppet show, pirate disability insurance, the limited number of headsets for men set adrift in small boats, threats of a horrible death by bicycle pump (?), or the French buccaneers' battle cry of "Remember Dien Bien Phu!" Imagine what Mel Brooks could do with this material!
THE PYRATES is about fifty pages too long. Those parts of the non-stop action that include the South American Indian tribe and the insanely evil Spanish Viceroy, Don Lardo, were unnecessary digressions better left on the cutting room floor. However, that minor flaw didn't prevent me from laughing out loud on several occasions, causing my wife to throw alarmed glances my way. Yes, I think even the Queen would be amused.
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Title: Flashman: From the Flashman Papers, 1839-1842 by George MacDonald Fraser ISBN: 0452259614 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: November, 1986 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: The Steel Bonnets (Common Reader Editions) by George Macdonald-Fraser, George MacDonald Fraser, George MacDonald Fraser ISBN: 1585790257 Publisher: Trafalgar Square Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Candlemass Road (Common Reader Editions) by George Macdonald Fraser, George Macdonald-Fraser, George MacDonald Fraser ISBN: 1585790230 Publisher: Trafalgar Square Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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Title: Black Ajax by George MacDonald Fraser ISBN: 078670618X Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub. Date: June, 1999 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Royal Flash by George MacDonald Fraser ISBN: 0452261120 Publisher: New American Library Pub. Date: March, 1985 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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