This is the fourth in the madcap Pirates! series by Gideon Defoe, whose swashbuckling pirates have previously run amok with Charles Darwin, Captain Ahab, and communists. This time around, the dashing Pirate Captain is nursing a wounded ego (he’s lost the Pirate of the Year Awards) on the tropical island of St. Helena. Unfortunately, there’s already another big ego with a sword on the island—the freshly exiled Napoleon Bonaparte. Rivalry ensues. Defoe delights in anachronisms and making fun of sea adventure stereotypes (witness the Pirate Captain’s attempts to win over the residents of St. Helena with a hand-crafted statue of the Queen made from potato chips). Unabashedly juvenile, farcical, nonsensical, even ridiculous, The Pirates! In an Adventure with Napoleon wants nothing more than to make you throw aside your sword with hysterical laughter—but watch out for where it lands since, as the Pirate Captain would be sure to say, the sharp end of a sword can be rather pointy.

posted Jun 23, 2009 at 1:59PM

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