- Hardcover: 196 pages
- Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd; First Edition edition (26 Jun 1978)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0002220075
- ISBN-13: 978-0002220071
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 2,150,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
Format:Paperback
December 1941, and M.V. Maya Star is on the way south, off the coast of Brazil, with a cargo of ammunition and other sundries for the embattled Near East forces (I assume). She encounters a commerce raider and has a narrow first escape - though sorely damaged and with many of the crew dead or wounded. She has to find a haven to repair, but is the raider still chasing her?
My opinion: I had not read Callison for many years (this book is from 1972) and I do think it is a bit dated; not the story, which is exciting enough, but the style. This reminds me of Alistair Maclean in its rather breathless prose, the switching from deadly action to long musings inside someones (rather agonised) head, and back again; the last sentence of a chapter, which is nearly always a cliffhanger. A minor but niggling detail is that 'Kriegsmarine'is consistently mis-spelt Kreigsmarine. That is bad editing. The book is not badly written, just in a style that does not appeal to me any more.
My opinion: I had not read Callison for many years (this book is from 1972) and I do think it is a bit dated; not the story, which is exciting enough, but the style. This reminds me of Alistair Maclean in its rather breathless prose, the switching from deadly action to long musings inside someones (rather agonised) head, and back again; the last sentence of a chapter, which is nearly always a cliffhanger. A minor but niggling detail is that 'Kriegsmarine'is consistently mis-spelt Kreigsmarine. That is bad editing. The book is not badly written, just in a style that does not appeal to me any more.
Format:Hardcover
An excellent novel, gripping and exciting, with a realistic plot, interesting characterisation, firm grasp on the subject matter. Unlike other writers in this maritime genre, Brian Callison really knows his subject as well as writing a good story.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
1 review
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Grittiest story ever told
6 Oct 2004
Format:Hardcover
The Judas Ship is a riveting sea-faring yarn of a (doomed) ammunition ship in World War Two that ends up in a Mexican standoff with a German surface raider off the coast of South America. The British crew is decimated in the first minutes of being ambushed and is set on fire. The first mate takes charge, and is soon caught between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea. While his remaining crew fight desperately to keep the fire away from the artillery shells that are heating up hot enough to fry eggs, the first mate has to make a series of painful and uncompromising decisions on how to safeguard the ship--pursuing the disobvious and eschewing the easy route--by steering his ship AWAY from the nearest help for the burning ship and critically injured crewmembers. The struggle just to survive taxes the men's endurance as they toil bleeding and ragged under the tropical sun without food and drinking water--and then they run up against the very same surface raider that devastated them earlier. Again, they are confronted with the most difficult choices known to Man--do they take the easy way out, and surrender to the Germans (to get medical help), compromise with them (to escape), or do they do their duty as members of the Merchant Marine so that the raider cannot kill any more allied seamen, even at the expense of their own lives?
The Judas Ship is told in a very naturalistic style that seems to complement that heroic (Romanticist) themes involved, instead of undermining them. The characters aren't noble Saturday morning cartoon heroes, they are British seamen, uneducated and uncouth, but they fight to uphold the values of seamen everywhere--to survive with honor.
The Judas Ship is told in a very naturalistic style that seems to complement that heroic (Romanticist) themes involved, instead of undermining them. The characters aren't noble Saturday morning cartoon heroes, they are British seamen, uneducated and uncouth, but they fight to uphold the values of seamen everywhere--to survive with honor.
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