Saturday, July 10, 2010

Current Reading List

Besides ordering John Bellair's Magic Mirrors, I ordered Tim Powers' The Stress of Her Regard (how could I resist purchasing a novel which takes its title from a poem by Clark Ashton Smith?), a supernatural "historical" romance, which details the interactions between the Romantic Poets of the early 19th Century (Keats makes a cameo in the novel, and Byron and Percy Shelley are fairly major characters) with a class of ancient, predatory elemental entities. Powers bases these vampiric beings on the nephilim of the Old Testament and the lamia of Greek legend. Powers portrays his nephilim as predators, but also as sources of inspiration (I'm about halfway through the novel, and Powers so far hasn't mentioned the Leanan Sidhe, the destroying muse of Celtic legend, but his "neffies" are a very similar concept).

The subject matter is also reminiscent of Powers' supernatural espionage novel Declare, which presents the role of similar supernatural beings in the Cold War (a trope employed by Charles Stross in such works as A Colder War). Powers also makes brief mention of fictional poet William Ashbless and Kusiak's tavern, from The Anubis Gates, one of my all-time favorite novels.

6 comments:

  1. I never read Declare. I'm going to hope it's a the lieberry three blocks from me casa.
    ~

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  2. so... it is Pink Saturday and the Big Bald Bastard left a comment in regards to Watermelon pie that made me laugh - so I thought I'd have a look-see. And he is writing about books. Good ones by the sound of things and ones I know nothing about so now I am intrigued...
    and will be having to nose about a bit more-

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  3. Tossing up between Anubis Gates and Dinner at Deviant's Palace.

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  4. Welcome, CailinMarie!

    I think I may have to put up a review of The Anubis Gates. What a book!

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