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THE� ‌GREAT� ‌COMPLETIST� ‌CHALLENGE:� ‌In� ‌which� ‌I� ‌revisit� ‌older� ‌authors� ‌and� ‌attempt� ‌to� ‌read� every� ‌book� ‌they� ‌ever� ‌wrote�

Currentlyâ€� ‌inâ€� ‌theâ€� ‌challenge:â€� ‌Isaacâ€� ‌Asimov'sâ€� ‌Robot/Empire/Foundationâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Margaretâ€� Atwoodâ€� ´¥â€� ‌JGâ€� ‌Ballardâ€� ´¥â€� Cliveâ€� ‌Barkerâ€� ´¥â€� Christopherâ€� Buckleyâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Jim Butcher's Dresden Files | ‌Lee Child's Jack Reacher | ‌Philipâ€� ‌Kâ€� ‌Dickâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Ian Fleming | Williamâ€� ‌Gibsonâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Michelâ€� Houellebecqâ€� ´¥â€� Johnâ€� ‌Irvingâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Kazuoâ€� ‌Ishiguroâ€� ´¥â€� Shirleyâ€� Jacksonâ€� | ‌Johnâ€� ‌Leâ€� ‌Carreâ€� ´¥â€� Bernardâ€� ‌Malamudâ€� ´¥â€� Cormac McCarthy | Chinaâ€� ‌Mievilleâ€� ´¥â€� Toni Morrison | ‌VSâ€� Naipaulâ€� ´¥â€� Chuckâ€� ‌Palahniukâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Timâ€� ‌Powersâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Terryâ€� ‌Pratchett'sâ€� ‌Discworldâ€� ´¥â€� Philipâ€� ‌Rothâ€� ´¥â€� Nealâ€� Stephensonâ€� ´¥â€� ‌Jimâ€� ‌Thompsonâ€� ´¥â€� Johnâ€� ‌Updikeâ€� ´¥â€� Kurtâ€� ‌Vonnegutâ€� ´¥â€� Jeanette Winterson | PGâ€� ‌Wodehouseâ€� â€�

Regular readers will remember that I'm in the middle this year of reading the complete oeuvre of cross-genre author Tim Powers for the first time; I started with his award-winning The Anubis Gates , then jumped back to his very first book, the mediocre traditional space opera The Skies Discrowned , then decided to jump to his much-loved '90s "Fault Line" trilogy that made me want to read him in the first place, starting with the flabbergasting 1992 Last Call . Today's book, written four years later, is the second title of the trilogy, and like most trilogies' second volumes falls a little flat compared to the first, although I've been trying to pinpoint the reason but seemingly can't.

Like Last Call, it's a contemporary story about a secret history of magic that exists "hidden in plain sight" in the broken-down back alleys of Los Angeles; but while the first volume deals with a complex invented mythology concerning magicians, tarot cards, ancient Egypt and the Holy Grail, this second volume deals pretty exclusively with just the subject of ghosts, which I suppose is part of the reason it's a letdown over the previous book. Also, even though it deploys Powers' usual storytelling technique of following several disconnected sets of characters and their own individual struggles, with them slowly coalescing as a group more and more as the manuscript continues, here it felt like it took forever for that to happen; and some of those individual storylines, such as the one concerning a preteen Indian kid whose body is being inhabited by the spirit of a wisecracking, cigar-smoking Thomas Edison, were threads that I got tired of quickly, making it difficult to stay fully engaged as long as they continued to take place in their own hermetically sealed environment.

I mean, it's not a bad book by any means, with even so-so Powers easily rising above most of the other dreck in the "urban fantasy" genre -- any book that can tie together Edison, Harry Houdini, the permanently docked steamship The Queen Mary, the history of 1950s television, and the hippie cults of '60s southern California is an all-right book in my view -- but I feel that one can convincingly argue that Last Call is better, making it a bit disappointing when you read them back-to-back, as people often will when wanting to read this trilogy. The third book, 1997's Earthquake Weather, supposedly ties together all the sets of characters from both unrelated first two volumes, and details a secret magical history to the Napa Valley wine industry, so I'm definitely looking forward to taking that on next; so please keep an eye out for my review of that here in the next few weeks.

Tim Powers books covered in this review series: The Skies Discrowned (1976) | An Epitaph in Rust (1976) | The Drawing of the Dark (1979) | The Anubis Gates (1983) | Dinner at Deviant's Palace (1985) | On Stranger Tides (1987) | The Stress of Her Regard (1989) | Last Call (1992) | Expiration Date (1996) | Earthquake Weather (1997) | Declare (2001) | Three Days to Never (2006) | Hide Me Among the Graves (2012) | Medusa's Web (2016) | Alternate Routes (2018) | More Walls Broken (2019) | Forced Perspectives (2020)