Prestige / Three Days / Hot Time
Sep. 27th, 2006 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jazzfishChristopher Priest, The Prestige
A novel about magic, illusion, identity, and duality. Two (four?) magicians, one trick done two ways, one woman between them.
There's a framing story set in the late twentieth century, but the main action takes place in period documents: first, in a memoir of one magician, and then in the diary of a second. Two performers in the late nineteenth century, forced by bad luck to become vicious rivals and, ultimately, to instigate each other's downfall.
The book was interesting and well-written until the first . . . interruption, I suppose, in Alfred's narrative. (Roughly page 50 of 300.) At that point it became downright compelling. Every few pages I would ask myself "What the devil is going on?" oblivious to the fact that the answer was staring me in the face all the time.
I'm still not sure what to make of the ending, or of the "twin." I suppose I'll have to reread the book in a year or so and try again. Darn.
Tim Powers, Three Days to Never
In a lot of ways this feels like a pale imitation of _Declare_, Powers's previous spy novel. There are several decent action scenes (though nothing as good as the opening clusterf*** of _Declare_), and the espionage code games now strike me as amusing, or sometimes irritating, rather than "Here's a list" brilliant. The scale is smaller, too: the Mossad operatives are nearly all you see of their operation, rather than the host of MI6 folk.
The magic and such have a more scientific background than is usual in his works (which makes sense, given that Einstein is one of the major background characters). But there are several very nifty supernatural gimmicks: Oren Lepidopt's curse (the sensation of "I'll never do this again before I die" after certain experiences, like hearing a phone ring) adds a degree of tension to color everything he does. And blind Charlotte's ability to see out of other people's eyes starts off just being a neat trick, but then Powers handles the ramifications of it so very well . . . reading, for instance, or just spending time around people when you don't want to give it away.
Lepidopt and the elder Marrity are among his best characters to date; twelve-year-old Daphne is good as well but a bit too mature for twelve. Oddly for a Powers book, it's the plot that let me down. Maybe it's too tightly focused (one family, three days). Maybe it's that I just didn't care about most of the characters. I dunno. This one didn't grab me, not like _Declare_ or _Last Call_ or _Anubis Gates_.
John M. Ford, The Last Hot Time
This is the second time I've read _Hot Time_ and I feel like I understand it only slightly better this time through. It's a fast read, and a wonderful tale of modern fantasy (elves on motorcycles and all that), made believable by a character who's an outsider and a sometimes bewildering lack of "As you know, Bob"ism. The action flies by so quickly that if you blink you'll miss the nuclear explosion that went off in Miami, or why Cloudhunter Who Keeps His Sisters' Counsel wanted to go to the museum . . . and what, precisely, has been going on with magic anyway.
I'm babbling. I'm overloaded. This book has all the trappings of a bog-standard urban fantasy set in what looks like Prohibition Chicago, but under the surface there is so much /more/.
Read this. It'll take you a day or two at most, and is well worth the investment.
A novel about magic, illusion, identity, and duality. Two (four?) magicians, one trick done two ways, one woman between them.
There's a framing story set in the late twentieth century, but the main action takes place in period documents: first, in a memoir of one magician, and then in the diary of a second. Two performers in the late nineteenth century, forced by bad luck to become vicious rivals and, ultimately, to instigate each other's downfall.
The book was interesting and well-written until the first . . . interruption, I suppose, in Alfred's narrative. (Roughly page 50 of 300.) At that point it became downright compelling. Every few pages I would ask myself "What the devil is going on?" oblivious to the fact that the answer was staring me in the face all the time.
I'm still not sure what to make of the ending, or of the "twin." I suppose I'll have to reread the book in a year or so and try again. Darn.
Tim Powers, Three Days to Never
In a lot of ways this feels like a pale imitation of _Declare_, Powers's previous spy novel. There are several decent action scenes (though nothing as good as the opening clusterf*** of _Declare_), and the espionage code games now strike me as amusing, or sometimes irritating, rather than "Here's a list" brilliant. The scale is smaller, too: the Mossad operatives are nearly all you see of their operation, rather than the host of MI6 folk.
The magic and such have a more scientific background than is usual in his works (which makes sense, given that Einstein is one of the major background characters). But there are several very nifty supernatural gimmicks: Oren Lepidopt's curse (the sensation of "I'll never do this again before I die" after certain experiences, like hearing a phone ring) adds a degree of tension to color everything he does. And blind Charlotte's ability to see out of other people's eyes starts off just being a neat trick, but then Powers handles the ramifications of it so very well . . . reading, for instance, or just spending time around people when you don't want to give it away.
Lepidopt and the elder Marrity are among his best characters to date; twelve-year-old Daphne is good as well but a bit too mature for twelve. Oddly for a Powers book, it's the plot that let me down. Maybe it's too tightly focused (one family, three days). Maybe it's that I just didn't care about most of the characters. I dunno. This one didn't grab me, not like _Declare_ or _Last Call_ or _Anubis Gates_.
John M. Ford, The Last Hot Time
This is the second time I've read _Hot Time_ and I feel like I understand it only slightly better this time through. It's a fast read, and a wonderful tale of modern fantasy (elves on motorcycles and all that), made believable by a character who's an outsider and a sometimes bewildering lack of "As you know, Bob"ism. The action flies by so quickly that if you blink you'll miss the nuclear explosion that went off in Miami, or why Cloudhunter Who Keeps His Sisters' Counsel wanted to go to the museum . . . and what, precisely, has been going on with magic anyway.
I'm babbling. I'm overloaded. This book has all the trappings of a bog-standard urban fantasy set in what looks like Prohibition Chicago, but under the surface there is so much /more/.
Read this. It'll take you a day or two at most, and is well worth the investment.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 03:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 02:47 pm (UTC)Based on the trailer and the cast list it looks to be pretty loosely based on. The movie has the two magicians being much closer at first than the book does (making for, um, oddness). It also strips out the nifty present-day framing story, so I have absolutely no idea what the movie's denouement will consist of.
Still looks to be worth seeing, though. Christian Bale, and David Bowie as Nikola Tesla.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 12:40 pm (UTC)I'd expand on it further, but I should quit LJing and get to class now. Possible comments at 11p or so when I get out of class. :P
no subject
Date: 2006-09-28 02:50 pm (UTC)I should reread Drawing of the Dark, and also read Stranger Tides now that it's been reprinted. Stress of Her Regard is, I think, top-tier; Deviant's Palace definitely second.
Oh, and there's a fairly recently published short story collection as well.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-29 03:24 am (UTC)I was correct. However, they still weren't as good as his really good stuff, and I still definitely like EW the least, so it gets its own tier of lesserness.
The FCPL has Stress and Tides at the Reston Regional branch at a minimum, btw (not the recent reprints), which is how I got to read them for the first time, around when Lex Luther Makes Me Wonder What Impact His Scheme Would Have On The Geologic Record came out.
I'm definitely curious about the short story collection (I think I heard about it and then forgot about it), especially as I recall him saying in an interview something along the lines of, if he's going to bother doing enough research and character development to make a good short story, he might as well expand it out to a novel, as it doesn't take him that much more effort. Are they his normal sort of alt history or magic realism, or what?
Oh, have you read the in-character sonnets he wrote to accompany 3DTN?