I have sung the praises of Tim Powers for close to 15 years.

His novel, The Anubis Gates, pioneered Steampunk, the fantasy subgenre in which the themes of science fiction come together with 19th Century technology and/or literature to form a whole new landscape of the fantastic. In The Drawing of the Dark he explored the Turks' siege of Vienna. Dinner at Deviant's Palace did the post-holocaust SF thing, but

with that special Powers touch (remember the hemogoblin?). On Stranger Tides was a heady, swashbuckling blend of Caribbean pirates and magic. My favorite, The Stress of Her Regard, explored the Romantic poets (Byron, Shelley, and Keats) and their Muse. World Fantasy Award winner Last Call posited connections between Las Vegas, the Tarot, and the Fisher King. Expiration Date gave us ghost-inhaling addicts just for starters!

Now Powers takes the precarious step of joining the casts of the last two novels and sending them (and some new characters) on a fantastic quest. In Bram Stoker Award finalist Earthquake Weather, one of Janis Plumtree's multiple personalities murders Scott Crane, the King of the West crowned in Last Call. Together with Archimedes Mavranos, Crane's loyal retainer, and Sid Cochran—a wine country worker with his own connections to the gods—Plumtree now seeks to right her wrong by reviving the Fisher King with an obscure ritual. The only ones who can help are Expiration Date's Pete Sullivan—the man with Houdini's pacifist hands—and his bruja wife Angelica, and their adopted son Kootie, whose continuously

bleeding wound marks him as a possible King.

Pursued by power-mad evil psychiatrist Dr. Armentrout, as well as various in-the-know factions who will stop at nothing either to prevent the King's resurrection or to crown their own candidate, not to mention a bevy of wannabe candidates themselves, the gang blunders from encounter to confrontation—all the while carrying Scott Crane's undecomposing body in their van.

Powers pulls together two of his most vivid universes with typically deft strokes that create a completely believable magical subtext to the world as we know it. In his hands, such strange phenomena as San Francisco's Winchester Mystery House, the rising and falling fortunes of California's Napa Valley harvests, the origins of Zinfandel, riots, natural disasters, and the will of playful gods all unite comfortably into a complex grand design. Layers of well-researched details mine urban legend, mythology, obvious and obscure theatrical references, rumor, and wild speculation to provide a background more and more difficult to dispute. Pretty soon you're ready to believe it all.

And the roller coaster ride is so entertaining that you want to get off and get in line again.

Tim Powers invents hip, intelligent and challenging fantasy. Not content with the traditional (and overused) Tolkienesque milieu, he prefers instead to navigate routes not on any map. And his many fans would not have it any other way.