Piratica

“One day when she was sixteen, Art remembered her mother. It happened because Art fell down a flight of steps, and hit her head on a wooden banister carved in the shape of an eagle…A woman, with strawberry-blonde hair tied back in a knot, and eyes the impossible green of gooseberries. And this was Molly Faith. This was her mother. Though for six years, Art hadn’t thought of her, hadn’t remembered her – this unforgettable and wonderful parent, who had been a pirate captain on the High Seas.”

Artemsia Fitz-Willoughby Weatherhouse is a young lady studying at the prestigious Angels Academy for Young Maidens when a sudden fall down the stairs jars her memory and she recalls herself as the daughter of the famous female pirate, Piratica, also known as Molly Faith. Her amnesia was bought on by a cannon blast, and witnessing the death of her beloved mother. Reinvigorated, she drops her complex nomenclature, and redubs herself Art, doffs her prissy gowns, and is promptly kicked out of the Angels Academy. After an unpleasant encounter with her father, the priggish Landsire Weatherhouse, the spirited lass escapes imprisonment and heads towards Lundon, where she hopes to reconnect with her mother’s pirate crew.

At the same time, Felix Phoenix, a white-haired strikingly handsome artist and singer, is making his own toward Lundon, when he is beset by a sooty Art, who promptly steals his clothing. Felix, clothed in grimy garments, gets mistaken for the notorious highway man, Cuckoo Jack in a series of bizarre coincidences.

Meanwhile, Art reconnects with her pirate crew at a tavern and discovers that they run a ship that advertises coffee. Furthermore, she discovers that her memories of life on the high seas with her mother are somewhat inaccurate. The ‘crew’ informs her that Molly (Piratica), was, in fact, an actress who portrayed a pirate queen in a stage show, of which the crew was apart. But Art has memories of really being on the high seas, and this conviction moves her to commander the coffee ship and turn her actor crew into a real pirate crew, and search for a lost treasure. By whacky mishap, Felix ends up a captive on Art’s ship, called The Unwelcome Stranger. They end up on the high seas, fighting real pirates—especially Art’s rival pirate queen, Little Goldie Girl, a beautiful but thoroughly evil woman—and have many nautical adventures.

Where much of Tanith Lee’s output is dark, sexual and heavy, this one is as light as a soufflé. The melodramatic plot is full of the sort of unlikely coincidences and mistaken identities that only occur in Gilbert and Sullivan operattas, or Shakespeare’s light comedies and indeed, the novel is divided into acts, rather than chapters. There’s a comic brio that suffuses the text, with its tongue firmly planted in cheek. It’s set in a slightly altered England of 1802 (which their calendar calls Seventeen Twelvety), and the characters speak in a patios full of ‘thees and thous’ peppered liberally with ridiculous piratical oaths: ‘By the Bat’s Ears!’ In fact, the novel’s one true shortcoming is that it lacks suspense and is a wee bit too safe. The novel is geared towards younger readers, perhaps not as familiar with the pirate lore satirized here.

This pastiche makes up for this lack of tension in other ways. Lee’s cinematic eye for detail is on display here. The set pieces are gorgeously described—the seascapes and landscapes that Art and her pals pass through. Her description of the doldrums, when the wind dies in the middle of the sea, are effective. The main characters are given subtle quirks that humanize them. Art is a strong female character The ex-slave pirate/actor Ebad Vooms is skillfully drawn, with complex emotional motives and ends up being a father figure to Art. There’s the merest hint of a homoerotic relationship between two of Art’s crew that’s a nice touch. The animals in the book, the bratty, squawking parrot Plunqwette and the ironically named Muck, the Cleanest Dog in England, take their place among the other animals in Lee’s oeuvre, such as the pet Thunderflower in the Biting the Sun sequence and the talking pet peeve in the Unicorn series.

The British version of the book says, “Presented Most Handsomely by the Notorious Tanith Lee.” Batten down the hatches and set sail for comic adventure on the frothy seas.