Robin Marx's Writing Repository

WilliamHopeHodgson

This review originally appeared on Goodreads on June 22, 2011.

The Ghost Pirates

By William Hope Hodgson – Stanley Paul – 1909

Review by Robin Marx

As with The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig', William Hope Hodgson makes excellent use of his experience as a sailor, serving up an atmospheric ghost story. Apart from the nautical theme, however, The Ghost Pirates is a very different book from The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig', and in some ways an inferior one.

The highlights of this book are without a doubt the dialogue and the atmosphere. The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' lacked any spoken dialogue, so its inclusion here is a nice change. The jargon-sprinkled sea salt conversations are at times hard to follow, but they feel authentic and flavorful. Some reviewers bemoan the lack of a glossary of nautical terms—Hodgson doesn't go to any effort to explain capstans and binnacles to the reader—but I didn't feel as if missing out on a word here or there impacted my enjoyment of the overall story.

While the plot itself is quite sleight (a characteristic shared by all of the Hodgson novels I've read to date), its execution is well done. Hodgson was a master of atmosphere, setting up a number of strange occurrences that gradually build into a tense, unnerving scenario.

I enjoyed The Ghost Pirates, but I think I would've liked it better had I read it before The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig', rather than immediately afterward. 'Glen Carrig' is filled with such bizarre fever dream imagery that the spirits of the dead, however spooky, seem rather conventional by comparison. That being said, The Ghost Pirates is an interesting traditional ghost story, and well told.

★★★☆☆

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This review originally appeared on Goodreads on June 7, 2011.

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig'

By William Hope Hodgson – Chapman and Hall – 1907

Review by Robin Marx

This is a rather gripping survival horror story that follows the crew of a pair of lifeboats, sailors adrift after the sinking of the titular 'Glen Carrig.' Hodgson wastes no time getting into the action; the shipwreck itself is covered in basically a single perfunctory paragraph, and events start getting strange and deadly very quickly.

The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' is similar to his other novels, The House on the Borderland and The Night Land, in that they're basically a linear narrative following the protagonist through a number of bizarre episodes. They read more like travelogues than carefully plotted novels, but the events are interesting enough that this isn't much of a complaint.

The story is written in an intentionally archaic style, with no quoted dialogue and few named characters, but it's fast-paced and packed with engrossing imagery. Stylistically it's a much more approachable read than The Night Land, which—while challenging—I also enjoyed considerably.

Hodgson delivers a thoroughly entertaining and imaginative story. I've enjoyed everything I've read by him thus far, and it's become clear that he's one of the more underrated figures in early 20th century horror fiction. I recommend The Boats of the 'Glen Carrig' wholeheartedly.

★★★★☆

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