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UBC 2007 #1: Powers, On Stranger Tides
Jan. 13th, 2007 11:46 amPowers, Tim. On Stranger Tides. 1988. Northridge, CA: Babbage Press, 2006.
I love Tim Powers' plots. There's a kind of excitement that's generated simply by watching the gears line up and mesh into action that just fills me with delight. On Stranger Tides has that, plus pirates! Zombies! The Fountain of Youth! A sorcerer named Woefully Fat!
In other words, it's a hell of a lot of fun.
I was disappointed in the ingenue--or, rather, I was disappointed in her relationship with the hero. All of the villains have excellent reasons for wanting Beth Hurwood for their very own, but as far as John Chandagnac is concerned, we get some vague philosophizing and the narrative's blithe assurance that of course he's in love with her. He's a guy. She's a pretty girl. Why wouldn't he be? The problem being that we see no reason in the text that he would be in love with her, and given the sixty-nine different kinds of hell Chandagnac goes through on her behalf ... I would have been happier if I'd felt there was something beyond narrative convenience between them.
(N.b., this is a problem that other Powers books do not have--a problem that in fact he deconstructs very handily in Dinner at Deviant's Palace.)
It isn't an insurmountable problem; the book after all is an Errol Flynn (or, latterly, Johnny Depp) vehicle with swashbuckling galore, and as that, it succeeds admirably. I merely grumble around the edges.
I love Tim Powers' plots. There's a kind of excitement that's generated simply by watching the gears line up and mesh into action that just fills me with delight. On Stranger Tides has that, plus pirates! Zombies! The Fountain of Youth! A sorcerer named Woefully Fat!
In other words, it's a hell of a lot of fun.
I was disappointed in the ingenue--or, rather, I was disappointed in her relationship with the hero. All of the villains have excellent reasons for wanting Beth Hurwood for their very own, but as far as John Chandagnac is concerned, we get some vague philosophizing and the narrative's blithe assurance that of course he's in love with her. He's a guy. She's a pretty girl. Why wouldn't he be? The problem being that we see no reason in the text that he would be in love with her, and given the sixty-nine different kinds of hell Chandagnac goes through on her behalf ... I would have been happier if I'd felt there was something beyond narrative convenience between them.
(N.b., this is a problem that other Powers books do not have--a problem that in fact he deconstructs very handily in Dinner at Deviant's Palace.)
It isn't an insurmountable problem; the book after all is an Errol Flynn (or, latterly, Johnny Depp) vehicle with swashbuckling galore, and as that, it succeeds admirably. I merely grumble around the edges.
