On Stranger Tides

By: Tim Powers

Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot

The basis for the upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean film.

On Stranger Tides follows the exploits of John Chandagnac, who travels to the new world after the death of his puppeteer father to confront his uncle, who has apparently made off with the family fortune. During the voyage, he befriends Beth Hurwood and her father, Benjamin Hurwood, an Oxford professor. Before they arrive at their destination, their ship is waylaid by Blackbeard and his band of pirates. With the help of the professor and his assistant, the captain is killed, and Chandagnac is pressed into piracy and sorcery as Blackbeard searches for the Fountain of Youth. Chandagnac, newly dubbed “Jack Shandy”, must stop the evil plot and save Beth Hurwood.

©2006 Tim Powers (P)2010 Blackstone Audio

Critic reviews

“World Fantasy Award-winner Powers demonstrates a precise control of complex narratives…This dark fantasy tale will appeal not just to pirate fans but also to anyone who appreciates Powers’ talent for blending the most unlikely elements into a brilliantly cohesive whole.” ( Publishers Weekly)

“Powers writes action and adventure that Indiana Jones could only dream of....Keeps you reading for the joy of it.” ( Washington Post)

9/10

Great listen, speaker did a wonderful job differentiating the voices. My only issue was that some of the voices were incredibly quiet and some were incredibly loud, which makes it very tough to listen to conveniently in the car without your finger constantly on the volume dial.

Swashbuckling Voodoo Theatre

This is a genuine good old pirate story. The performance kept me to the story.

Having said that....

If it was a book that I picked up to read, I wouldn't have finished it. This was what you might call 'real audible theatre'.

As always excellent

The whispering in the performance makes it hard to listen to in spots. Otherwise excellent

The most outstanding nautical novel ever!

I love nautical history and this book is the most incredible fictitious depiction of piracy and sorcery I’ve ever known. You will quickly find yourself deeply immersed and before you know it you will have become a member on the voyage yourself, waiting wild eyed to know the next witty move by your illustrious French “sailor”.

Dark Caribbean

I loved the take on magic and piracy… and the power at the ending made me smile and gush to my wife.

Nice book

What made the experience of listening to On Stranger Tides the most enjoyable?

Bronson Pinchot did a great job. Voices and accents were top notch

What does Bronson Pinchot bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Accents and tempo. Spot on.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Sure

Excellent performance, slow and wandering story

If you could sum up On Stranger Tides in three words, what would they be?

Not terribly interesting.

What was your reaction to the ending? (No spoilers please!)

The ending wasn't that surprising or interesting, much like the rest of the book.

Have you listened to any of Bronson Pinchot’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Not quite Jim Dale but close. Pinchot did a wonderful job with the various voices, moving between them effortlessly and in quite a believable manner.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

No

Any additional comments?

If you are looking for something remotely similar to the pirates movie, On Stranger Tides, you will be disappointed. Except for mentioning the fountain of youth and Black Beard, there are really no similarities. How the Pirates of the Caribbean movie was based on this I haven't the foggiest. Also, the story wanders around a good deal without any big climax. There were a couple of small points when I thought that maybe the book was finally getting somewhere. Each time it turned out that it was just a slight up tick in the otherwise slow but not completely uninteresting story. Over all it's okay. I need to listen to more books in the genre I think for comparison but this isn't a must listen/read. I will however be looking for more books read by Bronson Pinchot. He did a really great job with the character's voices and I believe this book gets it's over all better rating in a large part to his performance.

I will never be able to spell shandanyak

What made the experience of listening to On Stranger Tides the most enjoyable?

I picked this up because I really liked the Pirates of the Caribbean series. I was surprised to find how extraordinarily different the storyline was from the namesake PotC movie based on it. The vodun aspect was very interesting.

What does Bronson Pinchot bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Accents. Brilliant.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

If I tried to sit for 9 hours and listen to a book, my butt would go numb, fall off, and I'd be rolling around on the ground buttless.

Any additional comments?

What a weird question.

Good, not great

I really liked the take on the sorcery and the pirate battles. The thing I had trouble with were transitions. There are a number of times I had to rewind thinking I had been terribly lost in thought for a long time because the timeline jumped forward days or weeks in just a sentence or two. There are also a few parts where the book flows in and out of reality, which is hard to keep pace with as a reader. In addition, the action scenes were very well-written but always felt too short for their significance to the story, where less important scenes played out in great detail.

Overall, I did enjoy the book, and as others have said - the narration was fantastic. I don't regret spending my credit on this at all, but there are plenty of other books i'd recommend before this one.

decent outline with mess in the details

This is a weird instance where the outline of the book was decently well done, but the story itself is a complete mess. I generally liked the major points that got hit, but how they got to the points was pretty bad. The magic system was atrocious. It was confusing and nonsensical, and everyone did or least could do magic, which was stupid. The ending had a character become a bad guy kinda randomly that I didn't really enjoy because it didn't make a ton of sense. They could have just made a more straightforward story with waaaaaay less magic, no long treks through jungles(easily the worst part of the story), and more character development, and the story easily could be 5 star. This was a mess though.

The narrator was mostly good, but did the whole whispering to almost yelling thing that so many narrators do and I hate. I wish audible let me somehow normalize the volume so I could listen to it in the car without cranking the volume all the way up.