THE PIRATES' MIXED-UP VOYAGE

In the antic spirit of The Blood-and-Thunder Adventure on Hurricane Peak (1989), another from the irrepressible New Zealander's past—published abroad in 1983, a farce involving a young man who escapes managing "Ye Olde Pyratte Shippe Tea Shoppe" to set sail with his staff, already suitably costumed, in the shop/ship, now christened the Sinful Sausage in honor of their hoped-for exploits. These never materialize, but virtually everything else does: dragons and orphans; missing persons, doubles, an amnesiac; a witch in a gingerbread house on a dessert island; villains, comic constables, and romance. There's almost too much going on, in fact, but, as is her wont, the redoubtable Mahy has a reason for everything, even the puzzle pieces her characters keep picking up along the way—in the end, they all fit together to explain the whole picture, with plenty of intriguingly unexpected bits. The characters are from stock, but since it's Mahy's stock, they have a sharp and distinctive flavor. There are some ongoing themes—libraries are mentioned, casually but frequently, as if they were normal amenities; the pirates, who learn to read midway, find illiteracy a major inconvenience; there are even offhand remarks about free will and determinism. But fun's the main event, in the form of an incredibly intricate plot and continuous wordplay and hilarity- -enough for a dozen more ordinary books. (Fiction. 9-12)