The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
Book review
by John Goodrich

 

Rating:

 

Michael Crawford has not had much luck in marriage. His first wife ran off with a sailor, and now his second wife has been crushed in her sleep--while he was next to her, sound asleep. How did it happen? Why him? What does the mysterious surgeon's apprentice, and aspiring poet, John Keats know that he's not telling Crawford?

OK, even trying to sum up the plot of this one is hopeless. Tim Powers is one of my absolute favorite authors; he's won several awards for his books, and I love his vampire book. Powers is completely incapable of doing the obvious. His vampires are extraordinarily strange, and yet they are understandable under their own logic, and like nothing that you've read or though of before.

Like any good historical vampire book, this one provides us with a lush, touchable tour of a distant land in a faraway time. This is the closest you'll ever get to touring Europe with Byron and Shelley, Polidori and the authoress of Frankenstein. A wonderful book, full to the brim with seduction, wonder, and blood.