Robin Marx reviewed The Ghost Piratese by William Hope Hodgson
Review of 'The Ghost Piratese' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
As with "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", William Hope 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 book 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 …
As with "The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'", William Hope 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 book 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 immediately 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.
