Wordful Wednesday: Pirate Latitudes
Back when I first started reading a fair bit, I read mostly Clancy. Dad’s fault. Then I expanded to Grisham. Blame my Younger Older Sister for that. She also threw a Crichton at me (Congo, if I’m not mistaken), and I proceeded to read seven of his works in one summer. Actually, that number may be off, because I’m only remembering reading Congo, Sphere, The Terminal Man, The Andromeda Strain, and Eaters of the Dead at that time. So let’s just say I read a number of them.
(That same summer I also read The Relic, and I couldn’t sleep for a week. You might guess I’m not much of a horror fan. I see on Wikipedia that there’s a sequel. I won’t be picking it up. To close out this random digression, I’ll point out that I did rather enjoy the book. It just deprived me of peaceful sleep.)
Anyhow, Michael Crichton made it onto my “If he writes it, I’ll read it” list. I eventually caught up with his published fiction (I haven’t read all his non-fiction, though) and then kept up with him as he published new ones.
Unfortunately, as he died this year, there won’t be any more to keep up with.
However, he hadn’t finished publishing books when he died, and it appears (from Wikipedia) that there will be two more titles forthcoming.
The first posthumous title is Pirate Latitudes, which breaks from Crichton’s usual science-fiction style, instead hearkening back to my favorite of his other novels, The Great Train Robbery. As such, it’s more of a historical fiction title. I’m not sure to what extent it’s historical other than the fact that it’s set in the past and presents events that could’ve taken place.
(I think “historical fiction” is an extremely broad category that doesn’t necessarily say much about a work that’s so labeled.)
I surfed around a bit to see what other folks thought about it, and I found a New York Times Book Review of it that didn’t think much of it. But I’ve never put much stock in what professional “art critics” think.
(I don’t think reading other people’s reviews before writing my own is a good policy. It makes me want to be either conformist or contrarian.)
For my part, I found it charming and entertaining. Oh, it’s not great drama or anything. In fact, it almost reads as a Caper Story, which I’m a sucker for. (I would’ve said “for which I’m a sucker,” but that’s the kind of pedantry up with which one should not put.)
The story follows the exploits of Charles Hunter, an English privateer in Jamaica, circa 1665. Don’t call him a pirate or he’s likely to give you a dose you’ll not soon forget! He embarks on an ambitious plan to take a Spanish galleon moored at the port of Matanceros, which is known to be A Place That’s Impossible To Pull Such A Thing Off At.
Hunter assembles a colorful team of scallywags and a Master Plan involving explosives. Sweet! What could possibly go wrong?
Of course, things don’t go particularly well, and the crews end up having to get out of one scrape after another. I won’t reveal any of the fun stuff that happens (it’s not all fun, and there’s some grim death involved).
There’s a valid criticism of the book that the various adventures are almost like individual vignettes instead of one cohesive story. But they’re entertaining and I kept reading. And as I’m somewhat water-phobic, I find a certain vicarious thrill at reading about seafaring.
(I should read Treasure Island. How is it that I haven’t?)
The one sour note, for me, was the last twenty pages or so. In several of Crichton’s earlier works, I felt like he came to the end of his story and just stopped it without really properly ending it. That’s not the case here. In fact, the ending made a good deal of sense, and I didn’t have any particular problem with it. I just didn’t like some of the events of it.
Maybe I should back up a bit here and point out a pertinent fact: There’s not one good guy in the whole book. In that sense, it’s rather like The Godfather, in that you’re rooting for one bad guy against a bunch of worse guys. As a reader, I don’t have a problem with this, as long as I can see something endearing or redeeming about the character.
(I should point out that here I’m definitely lapsing a bit deeper into Spoiler Space, so read on at your own peril. I won’t reveal actual specifics, but I can’t promise you won’t be spoiled by reading further.)
Hunter wasn’t a character without any redeeming characteristics. But some of the things he did toward the end of the book made him just seem like a bad guy among worse guys, and maybe tipping a bit toward worse.
He’s not the only character to devolve in the course of the book. Indeed, the one moralizing character in the story turns out to be a complete snake.
Back to the Godfather reference. In the famous Baptism Scene, the audience might have felt quite different about all the gruesome things going down if Michael Corleone had been the one actually doing them. The fact that his agents were doing them abstracted the whole thing back a level (though it’s not like you don’t know he’s pulling all the strings).
Did that make any sense? I’m really not sure it did, but there it is. Hunter should’ve taken a page from Michael and had somebody else do the dirty work. Then again, if he was a real character, I can hardly fault Crichton for accurately drawing him.
Still and all, I enjoyed the read, and I’m sure I’ll pick up the real final book when it comes out. (I initially thought this was the last one, but Wikipedia never lies unless it does.)
Next up could be a Koontz, could be a sequel to a certain novel of games and hunger, or could be a a book about a dog named after a store. It’s a race, and two of the participants haven’t started (the two not being read to The Boy Who Loves Pancakes).
