On Stranger Tides, the inspiration for Pirates of the Caribbean was a wonderfully fun easy read that held up well against the movie series based upon it. Despite Disney's opinions otherwise, I'd love to see a movie that was truer to the book as there were a number of scenes where Tim Powers descriptions (especially those as some characters head into scenes from Dante's Inferno towards the Fountain of Youth that I don't believe my minds eye did justice too.

Jack Shandys rise to pirate fame is hardly believable, you end up rooting for his character all along the way as he's just a good guy that ends up being a pirate because of a couple instances of misplaced loyalty. ( )

On Stranger Tides is a historical romance in the best sense of the word; an old-fashioned adventure story that knows exactly what it is and will happily take yet another reader along for the ride. Pirates! Zombies! Voodoo! The famed Fountain of Youth! Villainous evil villains! (The famous Blackbeard is a dark sorcerer in this book.) Ghosts! Ghost ships! Dark, sticky magic!

The setting is great. Tim Powers has done his homework very well, and at the same time he paints an image of the Caribbean that truly belongs in a romance – a world where adventures happen all the time and heroes prevail against all odds.

Also, if you have read The Anubis Gates you’ll love how On Stranger Tides begins with quotes from Coleridge and William Ashbless. “Yes,” you’ll say, “now I know exactly what to expect.”
( )

1718. Barbanegra, uno de los últimos piratas que se enfrentaron a la flota del rey Jorge de Inglaterra, aterroriza las costas del Caribe. En tan desagradable compañía, y en contra de su voluntad, navega John Chandagnac, tenedor de libros y titiritero. No parece un buen candidato a pirata ni alguien dado a las oscuras maquinaciones de la hechicería, pero un capitán borracho lo rebautiza como Jack Shandy y llega a convertirse en uno de sus líderes... por cuya cabeza se ofrece una recompensa.

Interesting blend of sorcery and pirates! ( )

I started this book, maybe two years ago. That's how much I didn't care about it. I finally decided to just finish it, because despite all the problems, I wanted to see how it ended.

This is another book I really wanted to like. A friend recommended it because he told me this is where they got the idea for Pirates of the Caribbean. I found the book to be extremely slow. Told in the first person, it is written in an old-fashioned style. There is lots of description (which usually I love) but I didn't find that it added anything to the plot and just bogged it down. The scene where they are winding their way through magical paths to get to the Fountain of Youth dragged on and on. I get it! Time and distance are distorted. Did it really need page after page of description to get that across?

Had I known how slow it was, I would have just read the last section and Epilogue. There were a lot of "oh, by the way" reveals about magic and defeating bad guys with magic or how to disrupt the magic that wasn't even hinted at in the beginning of the book.

All the female characters--and there were only a few, were plot devices. The damsel-in-distress that the narrator falls for isn't even two-dimensional. And why the narrator would fall in love with her makes no sense except that she's young and pretty and not a prostitute or another type of "low" woman.

I really didn't care about any of the characters or what happened to them.

The shipboard scenes were well written as were the sword fights. Clearly, the author did his research about ships and sword fighting. Those scenes moved quickly.

The ending wrapped up almost too quickly after all the plodding along in the first two-thirds.

I have to say, that other than the fact that there are pirates and undead sailors, magic and the Fountain of Youth, I can't see much resemblance to Pirates of the Caribbean. I think the plot of the first movie was much better than this one.

I won't be reading any more books by this author. ( )