YMMV / On Stranger Tides

• Adaptation Displacement: The book is less popular than its suggested incorporation into the fourth part of Pirates of the Caribbean franchise.
• Complete Monster: In this classic pirate novel, Leo Friend stands out as the most depraved pirate around, surpassing even the Big Bad, Blackbeard, in brutality and evil. As a child, Friend poisoned a magic user to learn his secrets before killing him—despite promising to provide the antidote—then used his new powers to torture animals and poison candy that he left near school grounds. In the culmination of heinous childhood acts, Friend tried to rape his own mother in a sick attempt to show his gratitude for her recognizing his greatness, ending with said mother's death. Becoming a pirate later in life, Friend perpetrated numerous atrocities, from luring a crew of innocents into a raid where he personally killed many of their number, to sending one of his own crews to die as a distraction before gunning down a man who tries to save them. Friend later betrays his partners, kidnaps one's daughter, Beth, then tries to rape her while casting an illusion to make her resemble his mother, and he fully plans on tormenting Beth into becoming his broken slave. Having garnered immense power by his final duel, Friend raises a crew of undead pirates to assist him in his planned conquest of all he sees after massacring an entire ship of pirates. Showing his truly despicable colors more and more as the story went on, what Friend lacked in manners, charm, and sympathy, he replaced with a sickening god complex with which he proclaimed all of his crimes to be simply his divine right to commit.
• Squick:
  • Leo Friend's repeated and unreciprocated advances toward Elizabeth. It's implied, and then spelled out, that he intends to rape her at the earliest possible chance. His first attempt involves transfiguring her physically into his mother, into an illusion of his own home, and upon realizing this Elizabeth promptly throws up, which throws metaphorical cold water on Leo's flames.
  • Benjamin Hurwood's desire to restore his dead wife through their daughter's body is rather revolting too. Even Blackbeard was disgusted by that revelation.