Tim Powers and other Pulpy Goodness

Tim Powers and other Pulpy Goodness October 31, 2012

Right now Tim Powers’ latest book “Hide Me Among the Graves” is available on the Kindle for .99.  I read this book earlier this year and here is my Goodreads review.

This is a sequel to the 1989 book “The Stress of Her Regard”, a title I so liked and one that really expressed the contents.

The first novel dealt with a doctor who had become under the influence of a female vampire and also came into the orbits of the poets Shelley and Byron.

This new book involves involves the Rossetti family and John Crawford the son of the doctor from the first novel. Right now I am rather allergic to vampire novels as so many are being published and very few worth reading. Though I am not allergic in any way to Tim Powers and he presents vampires that are very powerful and very scary. As always Tim Powers can take a myth and make it his own with a behind the scenes supernatural system being very unique. So he adds to the vampire myth in his own way.

Like the “The Stress of Her Regard” the plot involves getting out of the influence of a vampire and in this case two vampires. There are lots of plot turns along the way to keep the plot growing and enjoyable in the 500 plus pages. I certainly enjoyed the various characters and there is also more of a Catholic element in this novel.

In other Tim Powers related news Scott D. Danielson posted at SFFaudio:

The latest episode of Protecting Project Pulp contains and interview of Tim Powers, and a story! “The Way Down the Hill” by Tim Powers, read by Fred Himebaugh.

The story was a solid one and I am really glad to have been introduced to it. The interview at the end was also quite interesting as Tim Powers talked about the influence of pulp authors on his writing along with other subjects. I subscribed to the Protecting Project Pulp podcast and have been having fun listening to some of their other episodes. I knew his book “On Stranger Tides” influenced (vaguely)  the last Pirates of the Carribean movie, I did not know it was also the inspiration for LucasArts “Monkey Island” game series.

Speaking of pulp, I just finished “Morning Star” by H. Rider Haggard which is available on Project Gutenberg. He is most well known for the Allan Quatermain series that started with “King Solomon’s Mines.” This novel was a fantasy novel set in ancient Egypt. The daughter of the Pharoah is favored by an Egyptian god, but her love of a lower caste childhood friend provides the backdrop for the adventure which includes sorcery and scheming royal relatives. Written in 1910 it fits well into the “pulp magazine” genre providing a fun read.


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