Tim Powers

[stoutfellow]

I'm beginning a Tim Powers binge. I just reread The Drawing of the Dark, and I'll continue at least as far as Last Call. I don't know whether I'll go past that; Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather were major disappointments, and though Declare was a bit of a rebound, it wasn't enough to persuade me to buy anything more of his.

I have to wonder what happened. The Anubis Gates, On Stranger Tides, and The Stress of Her Regard are outstanding, and Dinner at Deviant's Palace is pretty good, but after TSoHR he seemed to lose something. Maybe it's an editing failure; the later books seem a bit bloated. Last Call still has most of the elements of Powers' earlier works, but they don't seem to fit as smoothly as before.

I suppose that it's a coincidence that the decline occurred when he started setting stories in the twentieth century. (DaDP is post-apocalyptic, and the others lie between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries for the most part. The Anubis Gates starts in the mid-twentieth century, but doesn't stay there for long.) Maybe his characteristic mix of history, pseudo-history, and myth just doesn't hold up as well when he gets too close to the present.

Whatever. The quality of the earlier books remains, regardless of later failings.

Comments

[kattsune.livejournal.com]

I love Last Call, but I haven't read any of his other books. Which would you recommend as next best?

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

The Anubis Gates is great fun; there's some real nastiness lurking underneath that occasionally bubbles to the surface, but in the end Evil is defeated and the Good Guys go triumphantly into the future. On Stranger Tides is somewhat similar, maybe a little darker and a little deeper. The Stress of Her Regard is... dark. Very dark. Evils are averted, but the best the heroes can say is that they survived. The book took me a couple of readings before I came to like it, but it's worth the effort. (Part of it is that TAG and OST are plainly in the same universe; TSoHR is in another universe, similar in overall conception but with a bitterer flavor. Overcoming expectations was part of my problem with it.)

I'd say try to find those first two, first. Last Call is more like them in mood than it is like the other.

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

Let me give you the back-cover blurb from my copy of The Anubis Gates. It's absolutely accurate, without telling you anything about the real plot:

"An ancient Egyptian sorcerer whose powerful magic can change the history of the entire world!

A modern millionaire with a sinister plan, who journeys back to England in 1810!

A werewolf who switches bodies - then kills his victims to keep his identity a secret!

A hideously deformed clown of crime, who performs grotesque experiments on his victims!

A brainwashed Lord Byron - programmed to kill King George!

A young woman disguised as a boy, hunting the thing that killed her lover!

And our hero, Professor Brendan Doyle, who has no idea what he is getting into when he agrees to give a lecture on Samuel Taylor Coleridge..."

[subcreator.livejournal.com]

It has probably been 20 years since I read The Drawing of the Dark. I remember it as a pretty good story. How did it hold up for you as a re-read?

Thanks - Peter

[stoutfellow.livejournal.com]

It's all right, but... Let me put it this way: I would not reread it except as part of a Powers binge. The elements that he used in his best work are there, but they aren't quite integrated yet. The plotting's a little choppy; the various supernatural elements don't quite cohere; a few other minor complaints. Not a bad story, but not a great one.