The Pit of Despair
A novella. Cover art by Arnold Richter.
Captain Varles, of the pirate ship Revenge, is desperate to find a treasure big enough to pay off all his debts. His last venture didn’t work out too well; he lost his whole crew to the ghouls of Ravensbrook. He sailed home on an empty ship, accompanied only by his female first mate Jarryl, and the enigmatic sorcerer Shade, called by some the Hanged Man. Port Crimson is the only settlement on Paradyce Island, where only the ancient rules and traditions of the Red Brotherhood apply. Unable to find a crew there willing to ship out with him, Varles persuades a voodoo witch called Mother Macabre to conjure up a crew of ghosts and dead men to sail in search of the greatest treasure of all — that of Captain Firebeard; who buried his legendary hoard in the great and terrible Pit he dug on Shaft Island... which he left surrounded by terrible protections. But Varles’ old enemy, Captain Shatterhand, of the pirate ship Medusa, is also after the treasure. So the race is on; and the devil take the hindmost.
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Simon R. Green
Simon R. Green writes like someone with one foot in the shadows and the other in a cosmic madhouse—blending noir, fantasy, and science fiction in ways that defy neat categorization. Whether he's guiding readers through the eerie alleyways of the Nightside, a city where it’s always 3 a.m. and miracles cost extra, or unleashing chaos in the multiverse with the Deathstalker saga, Green never settles for the expected. His stories are darkly funny, unabashedly strange, and full of sharp edges hidden beneath layers of magic and menace.
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