On Stranger Tides

The basis for the new Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides film starring Johnny Depp, On Stranger Tides is Tim Powers's great Disneyland ride through pirates, puppeteers, treasure, and thrill-a-minute action that carries on from the start as it follows the exploits of John 'Jack Shandy' 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 Lost Youth. Chandagnac, newly dubbed 'Jack Shandy,' must stop the evil plot and save Beth Hurwood. 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 watersfor 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. Jack Shandy, bookkeeper and puppeteer, is the least likely man to get mixed up with pirates. Yet, on his way to seek revenge against his rich uncle for cheating his now-dead father of an inheritance, he is kidnapped by zombie pirates and taken into adventures, misadventures and lands filled with voodoo