Dinner at Deviant’s Palace by Tim Powers
My rating: 4/5 cats
i’m glad i read the introduction to this book before i started. i don’t generally, because they tend to give too much away, but this one was a really nice intro from powers himself, reminiscing about when he wrote this book 20 years ago. see, i thought it was a new book when i clicked it on netgalley, and finding out that it was written in his writer-infancy was good to know going into it.
not that this is a bad book, or an immature book at all. in fact, it was cool to see that a lot of what is great about tim powers was there, right at the beginning of his career. i have only read his vampire books, but what i was struck by most in them (besides the quality of his research when writing about byron and shelley etc—a rare thing indeed) was the density of his prose. he makes sentences that matter. he is also very good at his world-building, which is impressive enough when you are layering a veil of supernatural explanation over the actions of real people whose lives are well-known and somehow making it seem plausible and not silly, but with this one he has created a whole post-apocalyptic landscape packed with its own creatures and religion and social hierarchy and music, currency, cults, drugs, thugs—the whole package. and it makes sense! not in the way of, “this is probably what will happen in the future,” but “these characters are behaving in a way that is consistent with the world in which they live.” it’s a kind-of, sort-of retelling of the eurydice/orpheus myth, but with some tim powers twists and turns.
rivas is a wonderful creation. he is neither hero nor antihero—he exists in that liminal space where he could be both or nether at any given time. his moral code is all grey. he is holding on to the memory of a love he lost years ago, and for her sake he allows himself to be led back into a life he thought he had left behind, enduring pain and danger to rescue her, but he is not at all the selfless hero. he does change along the way, as any character in a journey-narrative will, but it is a transformation that is a combination of redemptive/practical. very grey all around. but he is likable. and he does go through a lot of shit to get the girl. and it is such a hushpad situation, at the end of it all. (if you get that reference, i love you)
so, yes—a very good blast-from-the-past book from tim powers, and it will not be the last i read from him. read the book, read the intro, and tell me it isn’t adorable when he is remembering the way he came up with the names and groaning at some of his youthful pretensions.
in closing, i love the hemogoblins, and the hemogoblin/tumbleweed scene was a killer. brief, but i loved it!!
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