Fiction: “The Pirates! In an Adventure With Communists” by Gideon Defoe

I love pirates. I LOVE pirates. Here’s how much I love pirates: for the premiere of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, I bought a pirate’s costume, drove to Springfield Massachusetts to the midnight premiere to watch the movie with a friend of mine. Whole experience cost me close to a hundred bucks, but it was worth it. That year, I recycled my pirate costume for Halloween (or, tried to), but when the bosses at work told me that all of a sudden, Halloween costumes weren’t allowed, I instead snuck in a jar of dirt to protect me from rogue kraakens.

So when I saw the title The Pirates! In an Adventure With Communists, I of course bought the damn thing post-haste.

This is the apparently continuing story of The Pirates! (exclamation mark is completely necessary) and their gregarious, charming leader, the Pirate Captain. Building on their previous adventures with Scientists and Napoleon, this time they land in London. Once they set foot on land, the Pirate Captain is mistaken for Karl Marx.

So Karl Marx asks the Pirates! to take the Communists to Paris. Once they get to Paris, the Pirates! attend Wagner’s latest opera and the Pirates! and the Communists (and Karl Marx) band together to defend the crowned heads of Europe from a Mecha-Nietsche.

I SWEAR I am not making this up.

Forthwith, some quotes:

This is the dedication:

To Sophie:

who, taking into account the effect of compound interest, must have even more than a quarter of a million pounds by now, so this is her absolute last chance to do right by me or else I’m dedicating Book Four to that billionaire Onassis girl, or maybe the really nice one out of Lost.

IT JUST WON’T LEAVE ME ALONE.

And as if that weren’t enough proof that Gideon Defoe is the reincarnated soul of Graham Chapman:

‘… it’s become something of a witch hunt.’ [...]

‘But you’re not witches? There’s some way of telling which I can’t really remember. I think it’s if you can dive to the bottom of a swimming pool and successfully retrieve a brick whilst wearing a dressing gown, then you’re a witch. But it might be the other way round.’ [48]

But … I thought … because you burn witches, they’re made of wood and they float because they’re made of wood, and if they weigh the same as a duck, they’re a witch?

‘Hello, lads,’ said the Captain, grateful for the distraction. ‘Something I can help you with?’

‘Yes, Captain,’ said the pirate with the monobrow, trying his best to look resolute. ‘A few of us pirates have been listening to Dr. Marx, and we have come to the conclusion that we, the workers, are being unfairly oppressed.’ [72]

All together now … HELP HELP I’M BEIN’ OPPRESSED

‘Before we do this, I’d like to point out that I’d written much more,’ the Captain started to explain, ‘but it vanished in the night. Probably eaten by weevils. Terrible problem on a boat, weevils are.’ [77]

Look! It’s a call-out to me! PIRATES LOVE ME JUST AS MUCH AS I LOVE THEM.

Mostly the French communists looked like somebody had just that second told them the truth about Santa. [83-84]

I just thought that was funny.

The three sets of pirates all arrived back at the salon at the same time to find the Pirate Captain stretched out on a chaise longue in the middle of the room holding forth to Marx, Engels and an appreciative-looking audience of Parisian intellectuals. The pirates waited politely for him to finish, because he was clearly in the middle of some important philosophising.

‘…and that’s why, in a straight fight, I think a shark would most likely defeat Dracula,’ said the Pirate Captain thoughtfully. [97]

Okay, here’s why this was funny: my friends and I have totally had screaming matches over who would beat who in a fight. From Wolverine versus Spider-Man (“ADAMANTIUM CLAWS AND THE BERSERKER ATTACK!” “WHAT THE FUCK, SPIDER-MAN CAN TOTALLY DUCK THAT SHIT!”) to the immortalized (heh) fight about who would win, Zombies versus Vampires from this past New Year’s Eve. Here’s a snippet (names anonymized for anonymity’s sake):
Dude: [Says something about a zombie attack I DON'T KNOW I WAS DRUNK AND THE VIDEO'S NOT THAT GREAT]
Friend 1: Oooohh … you’re talking about Resident Evil zombies, not real zombies.
Friend 2: ‘REAL ZOMBIES’?! DID YOU JUST SAY ‘REAL ZOMBIES’?!

‘His Royal Imperial Excellency the Crowned Head of Bootyopia,’ announced a statuesque blonde. ‘And his elderly butler, Carruthers.’ [107]

The joke about “Bootyopia” is followed up on the next page by saying that Bootyopia is like Ethopia, but with more Booty. And come on: who doesn’t want an elderly butler named Carruthers? I could use a Carruthers. Oh, Carruthers? I could use some more ice cream.

‘…I have to say, if it was going to be something supernatural, I was hoping for a vampire, because they’re a doddle. Stakes, garlic, holy water, true faith, sunlight, fire … I’m not sure there’s anything that doesn’t kill a vampire.’ [129]

SEE STEPHENIE MEYER THERE ARE DOZENS OF WAYS TO KILL VAMPIRES YOU DUMB BITCH

‘If I’ve learnt one thing as a pirate, it’s that wherever you go, from Chesterfield to Matlock, there are only two kinds of diabolical villain: there’s the misunderstood kind who are doing it for the attention, and then there’s the evil-to-the-core kind. Actually, I’m forgetting zombies. There are three kinds of villain: misunderstood ones who are doing it for the attention, evil-to-the-core types and zombies. And inscrutable foreigners as well. Four types –’ [154]

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

And finally, what to name your sock puppet (and when to use it):

On Discipline Running a Pirate Boat
An old sock and a couple of shells can be used to create a sock puppet that acts as a useful teaching aid when dealing with the slower puppets on your crew. You can name your sock puppet anything you like, but I’d recommend either ‘Socky’ or ‘Lord Socklington’. [165]

And for those of you that know me, you know I’m putting Lord Socklington right next to my jar of dirt in my office.

Grade for The Pirates! In an Adventure With Communists: 3.5 stars

Fiction: “A Rogue’s Game” by Renee Bernard

Renee Bernard is relatively new to the romance scene. I read her first novel, A Lady’s Pleasure a couple of years ago, and this title had been sitting on my shelf for a couple of months. I clearly still needed some easy brain food. However, I would have read this quicker if I hadn’t had the need for a ‘lunch break book’ — I’ve been reading two books at a time for a while now, because typically, there is one title I can’t bring to work and read in public without being teased about my reading choice. So stay tuned for the review of the ‘lunch break book,’ The Pirates! In an Adventure With Communists, coming soon!

But I digress. Apparently, Ms. Bernard turned A Lady’s Pleasure into a trilogy (as romance authors are wont to do), taking characters from her first book and spinning them off into their own stories. A Rogue’s Game is the story of Lord Julian Clay, the Earl of Westleigh (he may not be called ‘Lord’; I can’t be bothered to verify this, however, so we’re going to just go with it), who was the supposed villain in A Lady’s Pleasure. Also apparently, there was a second book between Pleasure and Rogue’s Game that I was unaware of; the good thing about this type of trilogy, however, is that you don’t need to read them in order. At all. ANYWAY. Lord Julian Clay, who is a bit of a rogue, has fallen on his luck. He’s losing at card games and depending on the kindness of rich friends to allow him to stay through the Season.

Meanwhile, the lovely Eve Reynolds (as all heroines are determined to be lovely) has arrived in London with her uncle, Warren Reynolds. Uncle Warren is passing himself off as a wealthy industrialist, but really, he’s a gambler. Or, rather, he’s a poor gambler, relying on his niece Eve to win the real money at friendly card games with sweet old ladies. Eve wants to escape her uncle’s life, so she is betting (and winning) jewelry and other baubles, hoping to cash them in eventually with enough money to escape.

And then, she meets Julian. And Julian meets her.

Their courtship is fiery. What I (kinda) like about Ms. Bernard’s stories is that the characters do not play by the same Regency rules: normally, the woman would remain chaste as long as possible. Not Eve (and not Merriam, the protagonist from Lady’s Pleasure). She’s very modern in her depiction, going after she wants and damn the consequences.

I can get behind that.

Grade for A Rogue’s Game: 2 stars

Fiction: “Holiday in Death” by J.D. Robb

J.D. Robb is the pseudonym for Nora Roberts when she writes her futuristic cop novels. Now, I have never read a Nora Roberts Nora Roberts, and I’m not sure I want to – when I go for a ‘romance’ novel, it’s usually of the Regency historical type, fraught with historical errors and anachronisms. So I’m not sure how Ms. Roberts writes one of her contemporary novels — according to her Wikipedia site, she focuses on trilogies of families and strong characters. I want to say that occasionally there’s a supernatural element in some? Maybe? I dunno.

Regardless, you won’t get any of that in a J.D. Robb. Set in the future (around 2050 or so), the main character is Lieutenant Eve Dallas, of the New York Security and Police Department. She’s tough as nails, curses like a sailor on occasion, and rarely lets people in. Holiday in Death is the seventh title in the series, so some background: Eve’s husband is Roarke — just Roarke, we’re not sure if it’s a first or a last name, and what the other one is –, and they met when she was investigating him for murder (Book #1, Naked in Death). They got married in between the third and fourth titles (Immortal… and Rapture…, respectively). Roarke is also super-rich. Like, he owns half of the planet, rich. If he had the chance to be evil, he’d be Lex Luthor (I’m guessing – my love for the Green Lantern and Wonder Woman aside, I was always more of a Marvel Girl myself).

Fiction: “Jitterbug Perfume” by Tom Robbins

It’s taken me just about two days two hours (if I hadn’t spread it out over two days) to compile all of the quotes I’d underlined and dogeared during the read, and now, I’m almost struggling to coalesce my thoughts into words that can be understood.’

I’m also kinda tired (just finished my second 4-12 shift at work, number 3 is … well, later today, as you’ll read this, and bonus! it’s sale markdown night!), so coherency may be an overstated goal right now.

Okay, enough blather.

Jitterbug Perfume is dense. The good kind of dense. It was about … oh, three weeks ago, and I had just finished reading Bound and Determined, and my good friend Sarah had pretty much poked me in the back and told me to read Decadent (“Alaina! There’s a line where the dude says, and I quote, ‘Fucking her ass, saving her life’! You HAVE TO READ THIS.” — Sarah), and what else had I been reading? Oh, Big Sleep, and I had picked up a couple of other books but thrown them down again because oh god, the Book ADD. Anyway, I was walking through Border’s with Amelia, and I was looking for books that were a bit denser than I had been used to – I wanted something meaty, and possibly, non-linear (now that I think about it, I think I picked this up after watching “The Candidate,” the really sad episode of Lost from this season, and it finally struck me that, oh god, Lost was ending).

SO ANYWAY. While I was in Border’s, I picked up another book by Tom Robbins, but when I got home, the urge to reread Jitterbug Perfume poked me.  I had read it years ago, and I remembered that I liked it, and I knew bits of the plot, but after reading a book five years ago, you can’t really relate the plot. So here’s the part where I try: