Books: The Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom by A.C. Crispin (2011)

Historical note: The events of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom takes place about a dozen years before the first film.

“Twenty-five-year-old Jack Sparrow is a clean-cut merchant seaman pursuing a legitimate career as a first mate for the East India Trading Company. He sometimes thinks back to his boyhood pirating days, but he doesn't miss Teague's scrutiny or the constant threat of the noose. Besides, he doesn't have much choice—he broke the Code when he freed a friend who had been accused of rogue piracy, and he can no longer show his face in Shipwreck Cove. When Jack's ship is attacked by pirates and his captain dies in the altercation, he suddenly finds himself in command.”

A little bit of background here:

It was during the production on Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End, when the editors at Disney Press, who produce tie-in novels, felt there needed to be a tale that would fill in Jack Sparrow’s back-story. There were already a few kids books series released dealing with his childhood and teen years, but all were geared towards the younger demographic. I’m not sure this was direction Disney Press wanted to go in, but impressed with A. C. Crispin’s (1950-2013) work on Bantam Spectum Han Solo Trilogy -The Paradise Snare (1997), The Hutt Gambit, (1997), and Rebel Dawn, (1998) - they felt she could bring some serious gravitas to a tale about 25 year-old Jack Sparrow, and not just a slap-dash effort to sell additional titles. Plus she was well established in tie-in novel field, having written several titles within the Star Trek universe. Two of those Trek books -Yesterday's Son and Time for Yesterday- were direct sequels to the third-season episode of TOS, All Our Yesterdays, and detail an alternate timeline where Spock and Zarabeth raise their child. Yesterday's Son would become the first non-novelization Star Trek novel to appear on the New York Times Best Seller list.  

Somewhat inspired by Tim Powers research done for his homage to the Disney ride that was released in 1987 as On Stranger Tides (which would become the fourth film in the franchise), Crispin did a lot of exploration on the historical period and all the nautical stuff. She goes into great detail explaining how a sailing vessel works, which are better than others, and why some pirates could easily overtake other ships. While she was doing this, Disney provided the script for At World’s End (which filmed in 2005 and 2006) before it was released in 2007, so she could see where the franchise was going. However, she had finished this book before the script for On Stranger Tides (2011) was even written. 

The only instructions for writing The Price of Freedom, all Disney told Crispin was to "stick to historical fact, unless it conflicts with established Pirates of the Caribbean continuity." So Crispin did a deep dive into researching the time period in an effort to do just this with Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly (2006) being one of the four pirate-related books she found herself using the most consistently. 

So with its seemly Patrick O’Brian inspired cover, the novel was released in 2011. And promptly vanished.

Like a few of the movies, though, the book is overlong. I understand Crispin’s desire to include as much as Jack’s back story as possible, but we did not need to be reminded again and again that Jack hated slavers and that the East Indian Trading Company had a dubious history with slavery and men who saw wealth, title, and power as way to move up in the company. Crispin really makes it obvious that –despite the time period- a lot of the EITC members were corrupt, evil, pathetic white men.

The there is the main villain of EITC, one Cutler Beckett, a character who makes his debut in the third film in the franchise, who’s horrible family problems gave him a sort of bizarre reason to be the asshole he was, but then Crispin adds an additional suitcase of vileness that could make some reader have sympathy for him. It was just unnecessary.

For the film fans, we get various cameos from Davy Jones, Hector Barbossa, Captain Teague, and Tia Dalma gets’ named dropped a lot.

While at 672 pages and clearly a more adult tale of young Jack Sparrow (which may explain why this title was never released in paperback and now has become a very expensive book to obtain on the secondary markets), it does slot neatly between two series for kids, Pirates of the Caribbean: Jack Sparrow and Pirates of the Caribbean: Legends of the Brethren Court. But I don’t think this is a kids book, maybe YA, but not kids.

So I’m not sure this was the book Disney was exactly looking for, but remains an interesting and cautious experiment about trying to overly explain Jack Sparrow’s life before the film series. Perhaps too much detail here, or a book split in two may have made it work fully, but this epic tale just suffered.