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17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Gene Wolfe is still a god!...but this book disappoints, January 12, 2008
This review is from: Pirate Freedom (Sci Fi Essential Books) (Hardcover)
Gene Wolfe is a god. He is the most brilliant writer alive. I have read and reread New Sun, Long Sun and Short Sun. If I were stranded on a desert island and could only bring one book, it would have to be Return To The Whorl, stylistically and intellectually the most sophisticated of the Short Sun trilogy. So it pains me to say that I was disapointed in Pirate Freedom. If it were written by someone other than my writing idol, Gene Wolfe, I would probably not judge it as harshly.
I felt that Wolfe was using a lot of tricks we had seen before, but using them badly, like some hack Wolfe-wanna-be. For example, the narrator's voice was very similar to that used in Wizard Knight; a modern day non-writer type stumbles into an unfamiliar realm and tells his own story in conversational language. There were phrases that were very similar to Horn/Silk from Short Sun. I wish I had kept a running total of how many times the main character, Chris, uses phrases similar to, "You will not believe me when I tell you...". I would estimate that he says it every 8 pages.
It is obvious from Wolfe's previous writing that he is a boat lover. He knows every thing there is to know about boats and relishes describing them in intimate detail. There is enough descriptive boat information here that this book could almost be classified as a sailing manual. I have no interest in boats, and this type of information would be very dry if it came from the pen of anyone other than Gene Wolfe. But because it is Gene Wolfe, his love for the subject becomes infectious.
My major complaint about Pirate Freedom is that it is told more as summary than as action. I felt as if maybe Mr. Wolfe did not want to invest in another trilogy or tetrology here, so he had to abbreviate all of the action.
Chris was on so many different ships and there were so many minor characters, that I found it hard to keep all the names straight by the end of the book. Wolfe can write books with casts of hundreds and make every last one of them a distinct and memorable figure, but he has not done it here.
I will say that this book held my interest from beginning to end, and I did love the ending. It was a nice, satisfying wrap-up. I know that if you are a Wolfe fanatic, you will read this no matter what I say about it. If you've never heard of Wolfe and just want an interesting read about pirates, you might like this book. If you have heard Wolfe is brilliant and you want to pick up one of his books, don't pick up this one. Go straight to the Urth books mentioned in the first paragraph. You won't be disappointed!
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good. not Great, March 7, 2008
This review is from: Pirate Freedom (Sci Fi Essential Books) (Hardcover)
An interesting take on the pirate novel from Gene Wolfe. As other reviewers have mentioned, he recycles the narrative device from the Wizard-Knight in which the narrator recounts, in a conversational letter, events that occured after he was mysteriously transported to another time/place. In this case, the narrator is transported into the early 18th century Carribean, an era when Spain was the dominant sea power, and her ships plied the Atlantic bringing gold and other treasure from the New World.
After signing on as a seaman aboard a Spanish merchant ship returning to Spain from Cuba, he learns the basics of navigation and seamanship. Later, while re-crossing the Atlantic aboard the same ship, he and the rest of the crew are captured by pirates. Eventually, the narrator becomes a pirate captain himself.
On the positive side, the novel is fast-paced, held my attention, and I was easily able to finish it in a few days. The main problem with the book is that Wolfe tries to cram too much action into the 300 pages, and thus much of it seems rather cursory. In particular, the climactic voyage around Cape Horn from the Atlantic to the Pacific is covered in just a few pages. Similarly the final battle with the double-crossing band of pirates is covered in little over a page. It almost seemed like the author was struggling to meet a deadline.
The other problem with having so much action packed into so few pages is that there is no room for descriptive passages to make the reader feel they are actually there. When I read nautical fiction, I want to hear the thunder of the sails flapping in a 40 knot gale, and feel the sting of the salt spray as waves crash across the bow. There was none of that here. In fact, the Carribean seemed remarkably placid, in terms of weather, during the narrator's time as a pirate.
Similarly there was almost no description of how the pirates looked, how they dressed, what they did in their spare time, etc. There was no room for character development, and so it was difficult to feel that these were real people.
I guess this review sounds more critical than I initially intended. This is Gene Wolfe after all, and even bad Wolfe is better than 80% of what is out there.
For those interested in reading more fantasy literature about time travelling pirates, I would recommend James Branch Cabell's "There Were Two Pirates" There Were Two Pirates: A Comedy of Division
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6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps Wolfe's best novel so far, December 25, 2007
This review is from: Pirate Freedom (Sci Fi Essential Books) (Hardcover)
Wonderful! If the prospect of a straightforward Jolly-Roger-romp glazes you over, snap out of it, because this isn't one. It's a magnificent portrayal of a damned man, Father Chris, unflinchingly intent on preying upon his own younger self.
As a youth he committed many appalling acts. Circled round in time, Father Chris now needs this younger version to do the same things again, so that he can steal his woman from himself. The book is couched as Father Chris' long confession of the bad things he did when young; but it's a worthless confession, without repentance, and his intent really is to fool us into giving him our permission to make it all happen again.
As always with Wolfe, the pleasure lies in a combination of elegant prose, a beguiling narrative structure and substantial themes.
Those inclined to think of the story as "simple" might like to consider how Lesage goes so quickly from the sloop Windward to the three-master Bretagne, and how he happens to arrive at Rio Hato just when he does ... and why it is that Chris returns from the past to a date which must be very close to his birth date.
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