Review of 'The Ghost Pirates and Other Revenants of the Sea' on 'Goodreads'
4 stars
The third entry in Night Shade Books's series of superb William Hope Hodgson collections, this installment collects his novel "The Ghost Pirates" and 28 other sea-based stories. The stories are a mix of weird tales, mysteries, slice of life tales, and pulpy adventures.
The Ghost Pirates
As with his other ship-bound novel "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", Hodgson makes excellent use of his experience as a sailor, serving up an atmospheric ghost story. Apart from the nautical theme, however, "The Ghost Pirates" is a very different novel from "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", and in some ways an inferior one.
The highlights of this book are without a doubt the dialogue and the atmosphere. "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'" lacked any spoken dialogue, so its inclusion here is a nice change. The jargon-sprinkled sea salt conversations are at times hard to follow, but they feel authentic and …
The third entry in Night Shade Books's series of superb William Hope Hodgson collections, this installment collects his novel "The Ghost Pirates" and 28 other sea-based stories. The stories are a mix of weird tales, mysteries, slice of life tales, and pulpy adventures.
The Ghost Pirates
As with his other ship-bound novel "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", Hodgson makes excellent use of his experience as a sailor, serving up an atmospheric ghost story. Apart from the nautical theme, however, "The Ghost Pirates" is a very different novel from "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", and in some ways an inferior one.
The highlights of this book are without a doubt the dialogue and the atmosphere. "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'" lacked any spoken dialogue, so its inclusion here is a nice change. The jargon-sprinkled sea salt conversations are at times hard to follow, but they feel authentic and flavorful. Some reviewers bemoan the lack of a glossary of nautical terms—Hodgson doesn't go to any effort to explain capstans and binnacles to the reader—but I didn't feel as if missing out on a word here or there impacted my enjoyment of the overall story.
While the plot itself is quite sleight (a characteristic shared by all of the Hodgson novels I've read to date), its execution is well done. Hodgson was a master of atmosphere, setting up a number of strange occurrences that gradually build into a tense, unnerving scenario.
I enjoyed "The Ghost Pirates," but I think I would've liked it better had I read it before "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", rather than afterward. "'Glen Carrig'" is filled with such bizarre fever dream imagery that the spirits of the dead, however spooky, seem rather conventional by comparison. That being said, "The Ghost Pirates" is an interesting traditional ghost story, and well told.
... and Other Revenants of the Sea
Making up the bulk of the book, the short stories that follow "The Ghost Pirates" are, inevitably, a mixed bag in terms of quality, but as a Hodgson enthusiast I appreciated the inclusion of even the lesser works (the posthumously published "Old Golly," or "We murdered a black sailor because he was black and maybe he's haunting us now?"). The best of the stories are quite good, and the vast majority of them are at least interesting.
Fans of Hodgson's supernatural fiction will find a lot to like here. There are sea serpents, a were-shark, derelict ships overrun with carnivorous fungi and other bizarre horrors, fish men, even a ship made of stone.
The more conventional stories were also fascinating, however. "The Sharks of the St. Elmo" is a particularly tense story about a becalmed ship surrounded by thousands of thrashing sharks as far as the eye can see. The narrator finds himself pushed into a leadership role as the captain and First Mate drink themselves senseless and the crew begin searching about for a "Jonah," a cursed shipmate who must be disposed of lest he damn the rest of the men. Jonahs are a recurring topic in many of the included stories.
Shipboard bullying is another recurring theme in this collection of stories. I suspect it's telling that, despite his prior career as a sailor, Hodgson refused a position in the Royal Navy when he enlisted in the first World War. Some of the brawlers featured here are presented in a favorable light (e.g., the eponymous "Jack Grey, Second Mate" is a badass who would be at home in a Robert E. Howard yarn), but most of the time they're vicious, drunk foes to be bested by the protagonists. "We Two and Bully Dunkan" is a clever shipboard heist in which two sailors get their revenge against their tormentors. Like a Boys' Life Magazine story gone horribly wrong, "The 'Prentices' Mutiny" is a harrowing tale of a ship's youngest crew members under siege by bullying shipmates turned murderous.
While I consider "The Ghost Pirates" to be the weakest of Hodgson's novels, it's still a worthwhile read, and the more than two dozen nautical stories that accompany it make this volume a particularly appealing package.