Pirate Latitudes
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| Harpercollins |
Michael Crichton
2009
2009
Back in around 1994, at the age of 8-years-old, Michael Crichton introduced me prematurely to the world of grown-up people's fiction with his magnum opus, Jurassic Park. Being an impressionable young lad with a passion for all things dinosaur, I loved it immensely, and proceeded to re-read it at least once a year for about ten years. In the meantime, I gravitated towards many of his other novels, and while I didn't enjoy any of them as much as I did Jurassic Park, that's not to say that I didn't get enjoyment out of them. Books like Congo, Sphere, The Lost World and Timeline were great adventure stories wrapped around a frame of pseudo-science, eventually made into sub-standard movies. Unfortunately at some point, I feel, Crichton lost his spark a little, and his more recent novels such as Prey, State of Fear and Next were all lacking in ingenuity and character for me. Then, in 2008, Michael Crichton suddenly died. The man who played a major part in my personal literary development was no more.
One year later, Pirate Latitudes was published, having been discovered on Crichton's hard drive, fully formed. Apparently he'd been working on the book for around thirty years, but clearly was never happy enough with it to publish it. Posthumously he didn't have a choice. Pirate Latitudes, as the title suggests, is a book about pirates (yargh!), set around the Caribbean in the 17th Century. Unlike most of Crichton's work, this isn't a sci-fi parable regarding the misuse of technology, it's purely an adventure story, about a motley group of pirates led by a fearless captain out to do some piracy on the hated Spanish navy. To be honest, it's not a complicated plot, relying more on character presentation and scenes of action and adventure more than anything else. Captain Charles Hunter is Crichton's lead protagonist, and, even though he sticks to many pirate stereotypes, he's a typical Crichton lead in that he's brave, intelligent, and ultimately takes the moral high ground. The other characters are all cliche variations on typical pirate motifs.
Ultimately while I hesitate to condemn Pirate Latitudes as bad, unfortunately there's not really much to endorse, specifically nothing that helps the novel stand out amongst the deluge of new and old adventure fiction available. It's certainly better than the shit that Clive Cussler produces, and it has its moments of excitement and amusements, but it's lacking the incisive sharpness and general masterly feeling of control that Crichton's best quality works contain. At his best the man was a master of the thriller genre, combining a solid presentation of interesting science (not being a science-minded person I can't tell you if it was at all realistic, but it did seem authentic in context) with solid, gritty characters and some great plot twists. Pirate Latitudes doesn't live up to his standards, which is undoubtedly why he didn't send it for publishing while he lived. Readers who enjoyed Crichton's previous work and read all of his best should consider this, but anyone looking to try it for the first time would be well advised to pick an earlier effort.
One year later, Pirate Latitudes was published, having been discovered on Crichton's hard drive, fully formed. Apparently he'd been working on the book for around thirty years, but clearly was never happy enough with it to publish it. Posthumously he didn't have a choice. Pirate Latitudes, as the title suggests, is a book about pirates (yargh!), set around the Caribbean in the 17th Century. Unlike most of Crichton's work, this isn't a sci-fi parable regarding the misuse of technology, it's purely an adventure story, about a motley group of pirates led by a fearless captain out to do some piracy on the hated Spanish navy. To be honest, it's not a complicated plot, relying more on character presentation and scenes of action and adventure more than anything else. Captain Charles Hunter is Crichton's lead protagonist, and, even though he sticks to many pirate stereotypes, he's a typical Crichton lead in that he's brave, intelligent, and ultimately takes the moral high ground. The other characters are all cliche variations on typical pirate motifs.
Ultimately while I hesitate to condemn Pirate Latitudes as bad, unfortunately there's not really much to endorse, specifically nothing that helps the novel stand out amongst the deluge of new and old adventure fiction available. It's certainly better than the shit that Clive Cussler produces, and it has its moments of excitement and amusements, but it's lacking the incisive sharpness and general masterly feeling of control that Crichton's best quality works contain. At his best the man was a master of the thriller genre, combining a solid presentation of interesting science (not being a science-minded person I can't tell you if it was at all realistic, but it did seem authentic in context) with solid, gritty characters and some great plot twists. Pirate Latitudes doesn't live up to his standards, which is undoubtedly why he didn't send it for publishing while he lived. Readers who enjoyed Crichton's previous work and read all of his best should consider this, but anyone looking to try it for the first time would be well advised to pick an earlier effort.
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