Tim Powers is the author of numerous novels, including Last Call, Declare, Three Days to Never, and On Stranger Tides, the inspiration for the blockbuster film Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, starring Johnny Depp and PenElope Cruz. Powers lives in San Bernardino, California.
"Powers writes action and adventure that Indiana Jones could only dream of."--Washington Post "Tim Powers is a brilliant writer."--William Gibson This is the novel that inspired the blockbuster motion picture from Walt Disney Studios, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides starring Johnny Depp! The remarkable Tim Powers--who ingeniously married the John le CarrE spy novel to the otherworldly in his critically acclaimed Declare--brings us pirate adventure with a dazzling difference. On Stranger Tides features Blackbeard, ghosts, voodoo, zombies, the fabled Fountain of Youth...and more swashbuckling action than you could shake a cutlass at, as reluctant buccaneer John Shandy braves all manner of peril, natural and supernatural, to rescue his ensorcelled love. Nominated for the Locus and World Fantasy Awards, On Stranger Tides is non-stop, breathtaking fiction from the genius imagination that conceived Last Call, Expiration Date, and Three Days to Never.
Aboard the "Vociferous" Carmichael puppeteer John Chandagnac is sailing toward Jamaica to claim his stolen birthright from an unscrupulous uncle when the vessel is captured . . . "by pirates"! Offered a choice by Captain Phil Davies to join their seafaring band or die, Chandagnac assumes the name John Shandy and a new life as a brigand. But more than swashbuckling sea battles and fabulous plunder await the novice buccaneer on the roiling Caribbean waters--for treachery and powerful "vodun" sorcery are coins of the realm in this dark new world. And for the love of beautiful, magically imperiled Beth Hurwood, Shandy will set sail on even stranger tides, following the savage, ghost-infested pirate king Blackbeard and a motley crew of the living and the dead to the cursed nightmare banks of the fabled Fountain of Youth.
Sure, "Treasure Island" is the best pirate story of all time -- but its by a narrow, narrow margin. While Stevenson was a heck of a fantasy writer -- check out his "Bottle Imp" if you doubt it -- Tim Powers is perhaps the best fantasy writer most fans have never heard of. And in typical Powers fashion, in "On Stranger Tides," he tosses in everything he thinks he might need in a pirate novel -- historical figures, naval action, a noble man in a bad situation, voodoo, jungles and so on -- and a few things only he would think to link to the rest and comes up with another hit, and my favorite Powers novel. The action here careens back and forth across the Caribbean and if Powers isnt wrestling crazy ideas to the ground as he does in "The Stress of Her Regard" or "The Anubis Gates," its only because, this time around, the plays the thing.