10 August, 2001: The Stress of Her Regard
I am not kidding when I say that I read a lot of science fiction. I've probably read at least a thousand science fiction paperbacks, conceivably two or three times that. But I've never been much of a fantasy fan. I've read Tolkien, and in junior high I read a lot of Tolkien ripoffs, but the number of (non-children's) fantasy writers whose work I'd consider reading now is probably in the single digits. Tim Powers, however, is high in the list. The Stress of Her Regard is not Powers' best book (I'm probably in the minority on this, but I'd lean toward his Vegas-gangsters-and-Jungian-archetypes novel Last Call), but any novel featuring a dyspeptic Byron, a doomed Keats, the vampiric secret of artistic success, and the secret history of the Hapsburg conquest of Italy is the kind of fantasy novel I'll read. It's frequently clunky (aluminum? "Sentient life on earth"??), has some awkward coincidences, and is stretched out too far at the end with said (unnecessary, but very Powersish) secret history bits, but it's quite enjoyable, even on the reread.