What a great book! Powers is always fun and intriguing. His novels always involve rich casts of characters and crazy magic with strange sets of rules, and On Stranger Tides is no exception. Some of his other books have gone off the rails in the last couple of chapters, but that's not the case here. The story is funny at times and exciting, and features a number of twists, turns, and unlikely escapes, but never lost me, and built to a satisfying conclusion. I think Powers is one of the most inventive writers working today, and this is running neck-and-neck with The Anubis Gates as my favorite of his novels.

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Well, I had to read this, because, you know, Pirates. Of the Caribbean or not, pirate adventures must be read.
And also, zombie voodoo!
How could any story with these elements not be good?

It wasn't bad, but I have to admit, I kept wishing it was better. I think, after reading both this and The Anubis Gates, that something about Powers' writing style is just not for me. I find the way he writes distancing - I never felt like I knew or emotionally identified with the characters. In order to enjoy it, I had to visually picture the (lots of) swashbuckling action and imagine that I was watching it, like a movie. The story really does have lots of great visual elements, and I do hope they use a lot of it in the upcoming movie - I think it will work out well.

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