Book Chop: On Stranger Tides

Title: On Stranger Tides
Author: Tim Powers
Genre: Historical fiction/fantasy
Verdict: Surprisingly enjoyable.

Not that I was surprised at having enjoyed it, but maybe I didn't expect to like it as much as I did in the end. I figured it would just be another pirate novel, like Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes, though this one came out back in the '80s.

To be honest, I'm one of the readers who picked this book up when I heard Bruckheimer was going to base the next Pirates of the Caribbean off the plot. I wanted to know what it was about.

Well, Bruckheimer is most certainly not going to put all the characters from the book into the movie. Looking at the IMDB page, I can only find one: Captain Blackbeard. Between Blackbeard and the Fountain of Youth, I wouldn't be surprised if Disney bought/optioned this movie just for the elements in it and the title. There will likely be very little in it that ends up in the movie.

At the same time, I'm thinking Bruckheimer (who handled the first three movies) probably read this book before, because a lot of themes and even some character names/personalities seem similar to those of Will Turner, Elizabeth Swan and Jack Sparrow.

Anyway, the book: it follows the exploits of one John Chandagnac, a French guy on his way to Haiti to straighten out his uncle for having robbed his father when it came time to inherit a plantation. While on the high seas, the pirate Captain Philip Davies overtakes his ship and makes prisoners of the crew. John ends up running with Davies and becomes a pirate, and they simplify his name down to "Jack Shandy."

Shandy is escorting Beth Hurwood (the Elizabeth character) all around, and she gets caught up in the whole mess of the plot when Davies eventually runs into Blackbeard and makes a run on the Fountain of Youth in Florida. It's a crazy journey through a not-alive dreamworld, where Jack learns how to practice voodoo and fight zombies.

The Fountain of Youth isn't just some place where you drink water and live forever: it's where you take your soul out of your own body and put it into someone else's. After Blackbeard figures this out, he amasses a fortune, hides it and allows himself to be slaughtered, after having prepared a second body for himself somewhere else. Shandy leaves his crew only to find out that his uncle has done something similar.

So Shandy runs from one pirate crew to the next, traipsing all around the Caribbean to save Beth Hurwood, avenge his father's death, rob his uncle and free himself from pirate oaths. Shandy himself is not the charismatic humor machine that Sparrow is, but I imagine his character will be replaced with Sparrow in the movie. I think Davies will be replaced by Barbossa, and of course Blackbeard will be the third pirate captain. I'm almost certain a "Beth Hurwood" kind of character won't exist. And anyhow, the female lead in the movie is Penelope Cruz.

The book was great. I highly recommend the audio version (second image) which just came out in July of this year. The narrator does a spot-on job with the voices.

And like I said, the story of the book probably won't have a whole lot to do with the movie, but that's okay. I think the movie will be pretty good too. We'll just have to see. For a second opinion, here's my boy Jack Sparrow: