- Paperback: 272 pages
- Publisher: Night Shade Books (4 Nov 2008)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 1597800945
- ISBN-13: 978-1597800945
- Product Dimensions: 15.2 x 1.9 x 22.9 cm
- Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 526,392 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
Do you love the sound of a peg leg stomping across a quarterdeck? Or maybe you prefer a parrot on your arm, a strong wind at your back? Adventure, treasure, intrigue, humor, romance, danger - and, yes, plunder! Oh, the Devil does love a pirate - and so do readers everywhere! Swashbuckling from the past into the future and space itself, Fast Ships, Black Sails, edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer, presents an incredibly entertaining volume of original stories guaranteed to make you walk and talk like a pirate.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Its difficult to rate an anthology, as the stories are rarely of uniform quality, for obvious reasons. Out of the 20-odd tales here, there are 5 or 6 I truly enjoyed, 2 or 3 I skimmed over out of duty, and the balance were readable, if you had time to kill.
Pirates of all types are found in this collection: space pirates, ice pirates, supernatural pirates, pirate pirates, and last but by no means least, rat pirates.
Boojum, the opening tale by Bear and Monette is one of the best in the book, but I also found Garth Nix and Naomi Novik did sterling work also. Suara Sea by Flint and Freer was fun, but my favourite story was "A cold day in hell" by Paul Batteiger. The imagery conjured up by that tale was superb and its setting unique: to call it Pirates on Ice is not to spoil the story but hopefully to intrigue. The world found in that story could support a whole novel, if not a series of them.
The nonsense tale "The Adventures of Captain Black Heart Wentworth" by Rachel Swirsky was also great fun, but sadly unfilmable, save by Pixar. Thats not to say a story should be filmable to be a success, but I challenge the reader not to regret being unable to see that tale on the big screen.
For the price, there are books of uniformly higher quality available, but as far as anthologies go, this is a solid one, assuming you like pirates (and if you don't, you should).
A great gift for talk like a pirate day, or to any Pastafarians who hold pirates in reverance.
Pirates of all types are found in this collection: space pirates, ice pirates, supernatural pirates, pirate pirates, and last but by no means least, rat pirates.
Boojum, the opening tale by Bear and Monette is one of the best in the book, but I also found Garth Nix and Naomi Novik did sterling work also. Suara Sea by Flint and Freer was fun, but my favourite story was "A cold day in hell" by Paul Batteiger. The imagery conjured up by that tale was superb and its setting unique: to call it Pirates on Ice is not to spoil the story but hopefully to intrigue. The world found in that story could support a whole novel, if not a series of them.
The nonsense tale "The Adventures of Captain Black Heart Wentworth" by Rachel Swirsky was also great fun, but sadly unfilmable, save by Pixar. Thats not to say a story should be filmable to be a success, but I challenge the reader not to regret being unable to see that tale on the big screen.
For the price, there are books of uniformly higher quality available, but as far as anthologies go, this is a solid one, assuming you like pirates (and if you don't, you should).
A great gift for talk like a pirate day, or to any Pastafarians who hold pirates in reverance.
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I like pirate stories, they have this quality about them that instantly draws me to them. I'll be honest and say I don't read half as much as I should do when it comes to this subject, but what I have read in the past has always given me that warm feeling inside that I get when I really enjoy something. It's not only books that do this, films also find their way into the house at some point or other, and nothing beats a good old pirate story. So, a collection of such stories should be something I would enjoy more than anything else, or at least I thought so. Fast Ships, Black Sails hit the mark on a few occasions, but on others it didn't come close...
In their introduction Ann and Jeff VanderMeer say how they were surprised at the breadth and difference of stories they received for the anthology. I can certainly agree with them on that point - there are many stories that are not your typical pirate tales. While this is a good thing for the sake of diversity, I found that some of the stories just didn't live up to the potential of the anthology and it left me disappointed because of this fact. However, the stories in here that I did enjoy were excellent and showed just how such a diversity can help a collection like this.
Some of my favourites were: Boojum by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, a story of space age pirates aboard a sentient starship; Castor on Troubled Waters by Rhys Hughes, an amusing story of one man telling a tale to his two friends in a pub; Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake by Naomi Novik, a tale of a woman using magic to turn herself into a man when the ship she is aboard is attacked by pirates; The Adventures of Captain Black Heart Wentworth: A Nautical Tail by Rachel Swirsky, a great story looking at two pirate rats in love with a cat; The Whale Below by Jayme Lynn Blaschke, a story of a ship stumbling on the remains of a whale with three mysteriously empty ships surrounding it.
I did enjoy other stories in this anthology, but those were the highlights for me. There were a few that I just didn't care for and couldn't really tell you much about them as they didn't stick in my mind much at all once I'd finished them. I'd have to say that this is a collection of stories that have split me down the middle when it comes to my thoughts on the whole anthology. Those that I enjoyed were top notch, but those I didn't felt like a waste of my time. Is this an anthology I'd recommend? Well, yes, but with reservations.
In their introduction Ann and Jeff VanderMeer say how they were surprised at the breadth and difference of stories they received for the anthology. I can certainly agree with them on that point - there are many stories that are not your typical pirate tales. While this is a good thing for the sake of diversity, I found that some of the stories just didn't live up to the potential of the anthology and it left me disappointed because of this fact. However, the stories in here that I did enjoy were excellent and showed just how such a diversity can help a collection like this.
Some of my favourites were: Boojum by Elizabeth Bear and Sarah Monette, a story of space age pirates aboard a sentient starship; Castor on Troubled Waters by Rhys Hughes, an amusing story of one man telling a tale to his two friends in a pub; Araminta, or, The Wreck of the Amphidrake by Naomi Novik, a tale of a woman using magic to turn herself into a man when the ship she is aboard is attacked by pirates; The Adventures of Captain Black Heart Wentworth: A Nautical Tail by Rachel Swirsky, a great story looking at two pirate rats in love with a cat; The Whale Below by Jayme Lynn Blaschke, a story of a ship stumbling on the remains of a whale with three mysteriously empty ships surrounding it.
I did enjoy other stories in this anthology, but those were the highlights for me. There were a few that I just didn't care for and couldn't really tell you much about them as they didn't stick in my mind much at all once I'd finished them. I'd have to say that this is a collection of stories that have split me down the middle when it comes to my thoughts on the whole anthology. Those that I enjoyed were top notch, but those I didn't felt like a waste of my time. Is this an anthology I'd recommend? Well, yes, but with reservations.
1 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
If, like me, you were expecting at least a 'Temeraire' short story in this collection of tall tales of piracy, given Naomi Novik's leading position in the list of authors, you too will be disappointed. Maybe that jaundiced my ability to enjoy what I had bought, but I was no more than mildly entertained.
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