On Better Tides

 

So, let's get this out of the way first:

At some point, Disney bought the rights to Tim Powers' On Stranger Tides and then eventually repurposed it (or anyway some of it) for their abysmal fourth Pirates Of The Caribbean film, preserving almost nothing of what made the book so good in the first place. Sigh.

So, let's not speak of all of THAT again.

Tim Powers is the oddest writer; he combines the most peculiar elements and spins the most madcap plots and yet one is pulled along without difficulty and left, at the end of each chapter, with a sense of a sure hand at the tiller. It seems sort of effortless, and that's increasingly surprising as weirder and weirder things get added to the story. 

But even a surehanded style isn't enough to make a book as enjoyable as this one was. For that you need pirates and Voodoo, and luckily, this book has plenty of both.

In fact, ironically, what kept occurring to me as I was plowing through this book in the three or four days it took to finish, was that this book was everything that the Pirates Of The Caribbean ride and film franchise should have been. 

For one thing it is chock full of actual pirating (you'd be surprised how rare this actually is in pirate media) and piratical behavior (drinking, lazing about, fighting). For another, it delights in a consistent and rational take on things magical, especially Voodoo and hoodoo, and it never feels tacked on. Finally, it abounds in romanticized early 18th century Caribbean flavor. There are deserted isles and mysterious swamps, there are Blackbeard and Ann Bonny and Stede Bonnet, there are ghosts and zombies and black magic. Supposedly the Monkey Island video games were inspired largely by this book and one can immediately see how and why.

In any event, I try not to belabour these little capsule reviews and I've already spent more words on this than I intended. It is a great little book. Certainly deserves to be in the company of the other great pirate themed fictions, Treasure Island and Captain Blood and The Sea Hawk. I cannot imagine a person who wouldn't enjoy it.