Tim Powers

[Libaax]

Anyone here read this great writer ?

[Shellhead]

I've read most of his books and enjoyed them. My favorites were On Stranger Tides and Last Call, for the exciting combinations of settings, ideas and characters. My least favorites were The Drawing of the Dark, an amateurish early effort, and Declare, which jumped around so much in time that it really disrupted the narrative flow.

In general, Powers does a fantastic job of conveying the feel of a time and place, and also a great job of creating a new set of rules of magic for each setting. However, there are a couple of recurring concepts that seem to show up in too many of his stories. Specifically, his characters drink abusive amounts of alcohol, but nobody ever calls them on it, which makes me wonder if maybe Powers himself has a serious drinking problem. Also, several of his heroes seem to have some kind of physical disability, including two separate characters who are each missing an eye. I look at the fixed gaze in that author's photo on the dust sleeve and try to guess which one of his eyes is the glass one.

For years, other fans of Powers had been telling me to try reading James Blaylock, a personal friends of Powers who has enjoyed similar success as an author. I finally tried a couple of Blaylock books, The Last Coin and The Paper Grail, and I hated them. The protagonists were silly, awkward morons completely lacking in self-awareness or even minimal social skills. Their inane actions annoyed me endlessly. Both books had a cool villain who deserved more attention, but was defeated in the end by stupid luck on the part of the hero.

[Pól Rua]

Blaylock's Victorian stuff, 'Lord Kelvin's Machine' and 'Homonculous', is better than his other gear.
I didn't mind 'Paper Grail' but yeah, a lot of his stuff is pretty frustrating, with the lead characters being inept old duffers who tend to doddle their way through adventures with all the verve and excitement of watching an old age pensioner navigate a busy stairwell.
'Land of Dreams' is pretty good too, but it's aimed at a younger audience.

Oh, and I love Powers' work.
I liked 'Declare' a lot more than Shellhead, but I really couldn't stand 'Earthquake Weather'. I was also a little disappointed with his short story collection, 'Strange Territories'. One of the things I like most about his work is the sheer density of ideas which he has, and this gets cut down a lot in his short fiction.

'Last Call', 'On Stranger Tides' and 'Anubis Gates' are probably my favourites.

[Libaax]

I've read most of his books and enjoyed them. My favorites were On Stranger Tides and Last Call, for the exciting combinations of settings, ideas and characters. My least favorites were The Drawing of the Dark, an amateurish early effort, and Declare, which jumped around so much in time that it really disrupted the narrative flow.

In general, Powers does a fantastic job of conveying the feel of a time and place, and also a great job of creating a new set of rules of magic for each setting. However, there are a couple of recurring concepts that seem to show up in too many of his stories. Specifically, his characters drink abusive amounts of alcohol, but nobody ever calls them on it, which makes me wonder if maybe Powers himself has a serious drinking problem. Also, several of his heroes seem to have some kind of physical disability, including two separate characters who are each missing an eye. I look at the fixed gaze in that author's photo on the dust sleeve and try to guess which one of his eyes is the glass one.

For years, other fans of Powers had been telling me to try reading James Blaylock, a personal friends of Powers who has enjoyed similar success as an author. I finally tried a couple of Blaylock books, The Last Coin and The Paper Grail, and I hated them. The protagonists were silly, awkward morons completely lacking in self-awareness or even minimal social skills. Their inane actions annoyed me endlessly. Both books had a cool villain who deserved more attention, but was defeated in the end by stupid luck on the part of the hero.

I dont care about if his themes are recurring. His brand of fantasy is different than many of the so called big writers of fantasy today. Which is prolly why he isnt the most famous fantasy writer.

I find his writing to be so original and of high quality.

You are right about new set of magic rules, his way of conveying the feel of time.

The Drawing of The Dark was my first book of him and i love it.

The feel of time,awesome characters,humor,magic,mythology made it great IMO.

If its amauterish compared to his other works than im very glad and cant wait to read his other work.

I have On Stranger Tides,Declare which i bought recently. Stranger he has much better prose than TDOD the little i sampled of it.

[dogzilla]

I'm a big fan of all the stuff of his I've read, though it's difficult getting hold of some of his books

Of the ones I've read I guess either Last Call or The Stress Of Her Regard would be my favourite

Of the stuff I've not read yet I'm looking forward to On Stranger Tides the most

I love the way he mixes the real life odd bits of history and culture with the supernatural

[Perry Holley]

I've only read Last Call and Expiration Date by Powers, but I enjoyed them both very much. At some point I hope to get around to reading some of his other stuff.

[Shellhead]

I've only read Last Call and Expiration Date by Powers, but I enjoyed them both very much. At some point I hope to get around to reading some of his other stuff.

You should definitely give Earthquake Weather a look. It's a sequel to both Last Call and Expiration Date, including main characters from both of those books.

[Shellhead]

Blaylock's Victorian stuff, 'Lord Kelvin's Machine' and 'Homonculous', is better than his other gear.
I didn't mind 'Paper Grail' but yeah, a lot of his stuff is pretty frustrating, with the lead characters being inept old duffers who tend to doddle their way through adventures with all the verve and excitement of watching an old age pensioner navigate a busy stairwell.
'Land of Dreams' is pretty good too, but it's aimed at a younger audience.

Oh, and I love Powers' work.
I liked 'Declare' a lot more than Shellhead, but I really couldn't stand 'Earthquake Weather'. I was also a little disappointed with his short story collection, 'Strange Territories'. One of the things I like most about his work is the sheer density of ideas which he has, and this gets cut down a lot in his short fiction.

'Last Call', 'On Stranger Tides' and 'Anubis Gates' are probably my favourites.

I hadn't heard of that short story collection, and gave it a brief google search but didn't get hits. I was surfing at work, so I got back to the paperwork and forgot all about it. Last week, I was at the library and came across it, only the title was "Strange Itineraries." I'm only halfway through it, but I already agree with you that it's somewhat disappointing. Powers needs more space to develop his ideas than the short story format offers.