Books by author: Tim Powers

I'm somewhat a sucker for time travel novels — this one isn't bad.

In spite of the relatively low rating I'm giving it, this is actually one of Powers' better books. I'd recommend it as a place to start within his work, in part because it touches on all of the themes he explores elsewhere, but primarily because it's self-contained, unlike Last Call.

The Drawing of the Dark was Powers's first novel, and it has many of the elements he later used to good effect in Last Call. Here, however, Powers struggles to maintain interest in a passable, but not great, story.

This is the third in the series that starts with Last Call. It reads a lot like the other two, but it's got deus-ex-machina all over the place. For me, it got tiresome, and I didn't much enjoy the last 200-300 pages.

This sequel of sorts to Last Call isn't as good as its predecessor. It just doesn't hold up as well, and I had a strong sense that Powers relied too much on deus ex machina as a plot technique. Still, there are a lot of fun ideas here.

Last Call is an excellent fantasy novel. Powers convincingly layers a self-consistent mystical world atop our modern world. There are many connections to the Arthur legend, and the novel is suffused with the tarot and poker. The pace is frenzied, but the writing is pretty solid.

This, one of Powers's earliest novels, is a swashbuckling tale of pirates and voodoo. I like his novels that are set in modern times more, but this was enjoyable.

I'm not a big fan of speculative fiction short stories, but Tim Powers is always worth reading.

This is another self-contained Tim Powers novel, and it's good. It centers on a device created by Einstein that is a powerful tool and a weapon more horrible than the atomic bomb. It deals reasonably well with time travel and some of its narrative difficulties. If the previous two sentences don't scare you off, you'll probably like it.