This book makes me like the term “speculative fiction” even more than I did before. How does one classify as either science fiction or fantasy a novel which involves robots, zombies, airships, and clairvoyance? Investigator Sir Maurice Newbury and his assistant Veronica Hobbes find themselves attempting to sort out three apparently unrelated mysteries: a horrifyingly [...]
Reading this book is like having a nightmarish dream — one of those ones where you’re really creeped out and disturbed, but you kind of don’t want to wake up because you know it’s a dream and you want to find out how it’s going to turn out. This story of young Jane, a foundling [...]
Movie trailers have made the phrase “in a world” cliche, but that’s exactly how a description of Mainspring has to begin: in a world where God is literally a clockmaker, and the Earth orbits the sun on a bronze track; where Christians worship the Brass Christ and pray “Our Father, who art in Heaven, Craftsman [...]
Words like “uniquely bizarre” are practically clichés when it comes to describing Tim Powers’ books, but they are no less true for that — and, as always, fully applicable to this enjoyable, zany novel about time travel. And Lord Byron, and ancient Egyptian gods, and a body-stealing werewolf, and kas, and a terrifyingly villainous deformed [...]