I think I know by now what evil really is

[sovay]

I am evidently not the target audience for Tim Powers' Hide Me Among the Graves (2012), which rushthatspeaks has been reading and describing to me; I think that if one of your central characters is vampire John Polidori, people should always be asking him if he got it from Lord Byron and he should be so tired of having to tell them ("Byron wasn't even a vampire, damn it!") no.

Comments

[thistleingrey]

I've liked parts of the Orange County ones, partly because I can see his love for a region that I've always held at arm's length (my best violin teacher lived near a setting that both he and Blaylock have used). I couldn't make headway in Graves, either, and wasn't over-fond of the one before it, though I've read (I think) all of the long-form work that precedes them. Sometimes paths diverge.

ETA Blaylock, less celebrated, writes OC better to my eye.

[sovay]

Blaylock, less celebrated, writes OC better to my eye.

I think the only Blaylock I have read is "Paper Dragons." What do you recommend?

[thistleingrey]

I like some of the stories in Thirteen Phantasms but cannot now remember which titles (which is me, not Blaylock). From longer ago, a cluster of three novels slides together somewhat--All the Bells on Earth, The Rainy Season, and Winter Tides--of which I think Bells is the most successful at what it attempts, which is sort of to out-Powers Powers (kitchen sink mode) at a smaller scale. :) Not perfect, but I remember it impressionistically as holding together surprisingly well. That's probably what I'd rec in long form. For me, the plots and characters of RS and WT are not the key thing, and they contain some eyerolly-or-worse factors, but their constructions of place as a major factor in their respective narratives are superb. And then there's The Last Coin, whose first chapter hits the right note in depicting "fictional" landscape/housing/retail features that are hard to believe in conjunction yet were real and true at the time, twenty-odd years ago--but I have read only the first chapter! Then it goes to Vegas, I think, in search of the Grail. Technically, Coin and Bells are 1 and 3 in a trilogy, but Bells may be read alone.

*shrugs* I haven't read his more recent work because it has coincided with a permanent drop in my could-be-reading time. Mostly, for better or worse, I wonder a little why Powers has enjoyed quite so much acclaim when his longtime friend and fellow PKD co-heir has not. I did find Declare fascinating, since I'm ignorant of the quibbles with history and representation that other readers have noted.