The author's playfulness is to the fore in this strange, charming book. It is a game which invites the reader to roll the dice, take a card from the deck, gain points, lose a turn, and, one way or another, advance around a notional game board: a pirate's world of exotic ports, risky encounters, escapades, wonders and the routine of shipboard life, always in the presence of the moody, changeable sea.

'A Pirate Life, a board game for the impossibly bored, is a tangy, buoyant ahoy. It is a game which invites the reader to roll the dice, take a card from the deck - short, shuffle-able blocks of prose are an avant-garde tradition - gain points, lose a turn, and, one way or another, advance around a notional board: a pirate's world of exotic ports, risky encounters, escapades, wonders and the routine of shipboard life. Cultural references bounce around, with jokes aplenty for the cognoscenti.' - Nicholas Jose