On stranger tides
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.
Stats for nerds
4recommend
12mentions
10people
2015–2024years
33% recommend67% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- I really enjoyed this book. Probably my favorite of his books I've read so far. If you haven't read On Stranger Tides, check that out, it's great as well.
- Both PotC and Monkey Island draw heavy inspiration from Tim Powers' book "On Stranger Tides". If you loved either of those then maybe go read it.
(I can't be arsed to find a citation for it but I've seen either Ron Gilbert or Tim Schaefer explicitly mention OST as an inspiration for Monkey Island, and Disney went so far as to loosely adapt it for the fourth PotC film.)
- A Canticle for Leibowitz - Walter Miller (recommended SF classic)
The Chronicles of Narnia - C.S. Lewis (an old favorite, recommended)
The Name of the Rose - Umberto Eco (some interesting parts, but overall a disappointment)
Theology and Sanity - Frank Sheed (recommended; a very written description of the Catholic faith; weaknesses are it's long and it's aimed to a mid 20th c. audience)
Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees - Peter Kreeft (recommended; a good exposition of Blaise Pascal's thought)
Catholicism: A journey to the heart of the faith - Robert Barron (recommended; a good explanation of Catholicism for the common person)
His Master's Voice - Stanislaw Lem (recommended; very intellectual look at the problem of first contact)
The Industries of the Future - Alec Ross (the robotics chapter is best; other parts are more light-weight; easy read)
Clouds of Witnesses - Dorothy Sayers (not my favorite Sayers mystery, but enjoyable)
A Study in Scarlet - Arthur Conan Doyle (recommended)
Why Gender Matters - Leonard Sax (recommended; most of the book is based on good science, but he does go out on a limb a time or two.)
Old School - Tobias Wolff (recommended; a world before widespread TV where high school boys actually got excited about literature)
Infinite Space, Infinite God - Karina and Robert Fabian editors (story quality varies; I enjoyed some of them)
The Sign of Four - Arthur Conan Doyle (recommended)
On Stranger Tides - Tim Powers (recommended; I love Powers, but Anubis Gates and Last Call are better. Still, if you like pirates you should like this)
The Art of Worldly Wisdom - Baltasar Gracian (interesting)
Aquinas at Prayer: the Bible, Mysticism, and Poetry - Paul Murray (recommended; this shows a different side of Thomas Aquinas)
Aristotle for Everybody: Difficult Thought Made Easy - Mortimer Adler (recommended; I almost think this should be required reading)
The Pilgrim's Regress - C.S. Lewis (I enjoyed it, but the ideas Lewis argues against are somewhat dated.)
Edit for formatting
- Related bit of trivia: MI was heavily inspired by Tim Powers' novel "On Stranger Tides" (which is a classic piece of secret history, involving Blackbeard, the Fountain of Youth, and of course zombie pirates). For the newest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, they bought the rights to the novel -- but pretty much the only thing they kept from the book was the title and the Blackbeard character. Everything else has been changed, for the worse. (So much worse.) So Disney's two pirate franchises are related, in a weird way.
- Tim Powers' pirate fantasy book On Stranger Tides is a very important link in this chain. Gilbert's said it was a major influence, and the first Pirates movie had a lot of Tides' vibes. Pirates 4 was a straight-up adaptation of the book.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Stranger_Tides#Influence_on...
- I thought there was a book somewhere in the mix as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Stranger_Tides Wikipedia tells me the book inspired monkey island, the ride inspired both the book and monkey island, and the book inspired the fourth movie.
