Tales of Terror From The Black Ship Review

Tales of Terror From the Black Ship
by Chris Priestly
From Goodreads:

When Ethan and Cathy fall ill during a storm, their father must leave them to fetch the doctor. . .but they are not alone for long. A sailor comes begging for shelter. So, the children agree to let him sit out the throes of the storm as they listen to his grisly tales. But something about the man puts Ethan on edge, and he is anxious for the storm to blow over, their father to return and the long night to come to an end.  Storms whistling through the sails, evil pirates pacing the floorboards, and of course, a haunted ship of ghostly beings…  All this and more is waiting to give you goose bumps in an atmospheric and thrilling collection of spooky seafaring tales. 

My Thoughts:  I don't really consider myself a fan of pirates, but I really loved the stories of pirates and ships in this book.  The tales are gruesome and morbid, so basically they were tailor made for me. :)  I read Priestly's Uncle Montague's Tales of Terror awhile back and enjoyed it, but this was even better.  It's filled with stories that I hope to read to my kids someday.  Maybe that makes me a bad future parent, but I think it makes me awesome.  My kids aren't going to be afraid of the things that go bump in the night, they will be the things that go bump in the night.

Originally I had purchased this book on my Kindle for last October's Readathon (as I always try to read some "scary" books during that time), but usually my physical book pile is so huge I don't make it to my Kindle.  Plus, it's super hard to update my pages read status since my Kindle works on percentages... and math is not my thing, so no, I cannot convert my percentage to page numbers.  But the point is, I think Priestly's books make good readathon material, each chapter is a short story and I'm always impressed by authors who can craft good short stories.

The illustrations, by David Roberts, brings to mind the drawings of Edward Gorey.   This was definitely a plus for me, and they fit the tales so well.  I don't know if I had a favorite tale or not, but the one with the snails definitely will haunt me for a long time to come.  And for cat lovers, there's a good tale of why it's best not to cross them.  Mostly I liked the children the tales are being told to, especially Cathy.  I can easily imagine my own children demanding gruesome and spine tingling tales as a storm rages around them.  ;)


Tales of Terror From the Black Ship is not for all of you, but if you like the occasional morbid tale, or you're a big fan of pirates, then I would definitely recommend this to you!

Tales of Terror From the Black Ship gets a Midnight Book Rating of:

(because you may have trouble sleeping at night!)

The cover gets a Midnight Book Cover Rating of:

Love the illustrations!