Pirate Freedom

It starts with a confession from a priest. His past has reached further back than what many would consider possible. Before he was a priest, he was the pirate Captain Cristofo, and before he was a pirate, he was just Chris, a boy living in a monastery in Cuba the day after tomorrow.

One day Chris realizes that he is not meant for the monastery he has grown up in, and leaves. On the streets of Havana everything looks strange and out-of-date, but Chris is too busy trying to find his next meal and a safe place to sleep to contemplate the city's odd lack of modern conveniences. He finds that this world is a much harder one than the one he remembers; it's a place where people steal, lie, and cheat. Where slaves are sold at auction, and the Spanish, French, and English are all battling for supremacy. When Chris is offered the opportunity to work on a ship in exchange for food and a small bit of money, he takes it, and thus begins his life as a pirate. People die, treasures are found, women are taken captive, and crews rebel.

Gene Wolfe is a masterful storyteller, and in Pirate Freedom, he uses his customary vision to invite us into the captivating world of pirates, their lives, and their adventures.

From Publishers WeeklyFantasist extraordinaire Wolfe (The Wizard) dabbles in time travel paradoxes for this charming tale of a monastic novice in postcommunist Cuba. As the years pass, Christopher, the son of an American crime lord, gradually loses touch with his family and decides against taking holy orders. He leaves the monastery and finds himself in the 18th century. This unexplained time slip, along with Chris's equally mysterious jump to the late 20th century, are the only fantastic elements in what's otherwise a fairly straightforward tale of derring-do on the high seas. Wolfe describes his plucky young hero's rise from much abused common seaman to successful pirate captain, filling his story with duels, treachery, ship-to-ship combat and an abundance of accurate period detail, avoiding both the larger than life romanticism and the fantastical elements often associated with such pirate tales. Captain Chris is a laconic and rather unemotional narrator, which may put off some readers, but Wolfe's elegant prose still makes this relatively minor effort worth reading. (Nov.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From BooklistWolfe's very fine new novel is the story of the two lives of Father Christopher, a Catholic priest in the contemporary world and a successful pirate on the Spanish Main three centuries earlier. As always, Wolfe has done his homework, as the roster of famous pirates to whom the book is dedicated immediately indicates. Piratical Christopher certainly takes advantage of his chosen career to free himself of many of the restrictions of his era, though he did also take a wife and father a child, both of whom he lost in his passage to the future. At the end of a superlatively well-done sea story, the modern-day priest is looking for a way back to his original self, to his family, and to the treasure that, however ill-gotten, he regards as his. Fans of fantasy, of Wolfe, and of sea stories should all beat paths to anywhere this yarn is on the shelf. Green, Roland