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Loading... The Stress of Her Regard (1989)by Tim Powers
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. _The Stress of Her Regard_ is (still) pretty much my favorite Tim Powers book. It is exactly what you expect from Powers: an in-depth exploration of some literary ideas, poets, or authors, based on historical facts, but with ribbons of supernatural mystery winding through the gaps. ( ) The first of Powers' novels I ever read, and still my favorite. My wife and I brought our scruffy, dog-eared paperback copy along to a convention where he was signing, and the way his face lit up when we sheepishly presented it is something we will never forget. He was delighted to sign a copy that had so obviously been read over and over, versus all the pristine books he'd been signing for people who simply collected them. I would really like to see this re-released for Kindle, simply for the portability. This fantasy/sort-of horror (but it's not scary at all) novel employs the likes of Shelley, Lord Byron, and Keats as characters and explains their real-life eccentricities as symptoms of their various involvement with a species here called the Nephilim and which includes what people have termed lamia, vampires, and the like. It's an absolute hoot and I love the way Powers entwines the poets into the story. Think Pride & Prejudice & Zombies before it was cool. (And take that statement with a grain of salt because I fully admit that I've never read P&P&Z). At any rate, if you like this sort of thing, you'll love this. It's very well paced and nicely written, and again, the plot is imaginative and cool. Also, the audio was read by Simon Vance, so you know it's great. Powers nails it like he always goes, once again building up a world just a splinter away from our own. This time his jumping off point is the lives and poetry of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, and John Keats. Each chapter begins with an epigraph from a poem or letter (sometimes including Swinburne, Milton, Housman, or another) that very strongly hints at the fantastic events that follow. Masterful stuff. I abandoned this one for some dumb reason back in the day and restarted it. Tim Powers takes his historical fantasy lens to the Romantic poets and comes up with quite the tale about lamia, statuary, and the relevance of atomic bonds to the Riddle of the Sphinx. It's also probably the scariest of his novels - more than once I jumped when someone walked into the room while I was reading. Worth a read (especially now that you can actually find it in bookstores again). no reviews | add a review
Belongs to Series
World Fantasy Award Winner Michael Crawford is forced to flee when discovers his bride brutally murdered in their wedding bed. Yet it is not the revengeful townspeople he fears but the deadly embrace of the malignant spirit that is claiming him as her bridegroom. Crawford will not travel alone; soon he is aided by his fellow victims, the greatest poets of his day--Byron, Keats, and Shelley. Together they embark upon a desperate journey, crisscrossing Europe and battling the vampiric fiend who seeks her ultimate pleasure in their ravaged bodies and imperiled souls. Telling a secret history of passion and terror, Tim Powers (The Anubis Gates, Declare, Three Days to Never) masterfully recasts the tragic lives of the Romantics into a uniquely frightening tale. Back in print for the first time since 1994, this newly revised edition of The Stress of Her Regard will thrill both Powers fans and newcomers to this gripping Gothic tour de force. No library descriptions found. |
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