Briony Cameron’s The Ballad of Jacquotte Delahaye takes the story of the legendary pirate Jacquotte Delahaye and imagines her rise to captain of a fleet of over a hundred pirates. While her existence is debated, her legacy nonetheless makes for a fascinating story, one that deserves to be shared as widely as any other historical (or semi-historical) pirate. Born in Haiti to a Black mother and white father, Jacquotte flees her home country on a ship with a crew of her closest friends and an intriguing woman named Teresa, with whom she falls in love. While they are quickly overtaken and indentured by the fearsome Captain Blackhand, Jacquotte eventually overcomes him to become captain in her own right to a crew of women, mixed race people, and formerly enslaved people.
This book didn’t quite work for me as much as I hoped it would, which I think was mostly a case of me being the wrong reader for it. It was much more action-heavy than I tend to prefer, with less focus on character dynamics. I found that particularly frustrating when it came to the romance because I never really got a sense of why they loved each other. It felt like their romance was primarily based in a night we never actually got to see, and beyond that, Teresa was kind of just there. I do blame the blurb for that a bit as well, because if not for the multiple mentions of their romance there, I would not have expected it to be more prominent than it actually ended up being.
However, I did really enjoy the first three-quarters of the book. Briony Cameron has a very readable voice, and I particularly appreciated how unflinching it was about the history it was set in. That did make parts of it hard to read, but nothing in this book felt gratuitous (not even the fight scenes that were genuinely well-done and will surely please fight-scene enjoyers, of which I myself am unfortunately not one). The brutality felt honest, but it was also always met with a surprising warmth from our leads. There is a real sense of camaraderie and respect among the crew, so it does not feel unbelievable that people would be so willing to follow Jacquotte.
I think that all of the problems I had with this book would have been solved if it had only been a bit longer. Another fifty or so pages would have given the relationships between the crew, in addition to the romance, a bit more time to breathe and to build. However, pirate fans and action lovers should absolutely give this book a shot. The history is fascinating, and Jacquotte is a heroine to root for. It is about time she gets some of the celebration she deserves.
