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Dinner at Deviant's Palace
Winner of the Philip K. Dick Award: In a nuclear-ravaged California, a humble musician sets out on a dangerous quest to rescue his lost love from the clutches of a soul-devouring religious cult
In the twenty-second century, the City of Angels is a tragic shell of its former self, having long ago been ruined and reshaped by nuclear disaster. Before he was in a band in Ellay, Gregorio Rivas was a redeemer, rescuing lost souls trapped in the Jaybirds cult of the powerful maniac Norton Jaybush. Rivas had hoped those days were behind him, but a desperate entreaty from a powerful official is pulling him back into the game. The rewards will be plentiful if he can wrest Urania, the official’s daughter and Gregorio’s first love, from Jaybush’s sinister clutches. To do so, the redeemer reborn must face blood-sucking hemogoblins and other monstrosities on his way to discovering the ultimate secrets of this neo-Californian civilization.
One of the most ingeniously imaginative writers of our time, Tim Powers dazzles in an early work that displays his unique creative genius. Alive with wit, intelligence, and wild invention, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace is a mad adventure across a dystopian future as only Tim Powers could have imagined it.
In the twenty-second century, the City of Angels is a tragic shell of its former self, having long ago been ruined and reshaped by nuclear disaster. Before he was in a band in Ellay, Gregorio Rivas was a redeemer, rescuing lost souls trapped in the Jaybirds cult of the powerful maniac Norton Jaybush. Rivas had hoped those days were behind him, but a desperate entreaty from a powerful official is pulling him back into the game. The rewards will be plentiful if he can wrest Urania, the official’s daughter and Gregorio’s first love, from Jaybush’s sinister clutches. To do so, the redeemer reborn must face blood-sucking hemogoblins and other monstrosities on his way to discovering the ultimate secrets of this neo-Californian civilization.
One of the most ingeniously imaginative writers of our time, Tim Powers dazzles in an early work that displays his unique creative genius. Alive with wit, intelligence, and wild invention, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace is a mad adventure across a dystopian future as only Tim Powers could have imagined it.
256 pages, ebook
First published January 1, 1985
70 people are currently reading
1475 people want to read
About the author
Tim Powers
167 books1,748 followersTimothy Thomas Powers is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare.
Most of Powers's novels are "secret histories": he uses actual, documented historical events featuring famous people, but shows another view of them in which occult or supernatural factors heavily influence the motivations and actions of the characters.
Powers was born in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in California, where his Roman Catholic family moved in 1959.
He studied English Literature at Cal State Fullerton, where he first met James Blaylock and K.W. Jeter, both of whom remained close friends and occasional collaborators; the trio have half-seriously referred to themselves as "steampunks" in contrast to the prevailing cyberpunk genre of the 1980s. Powers and Blaylock invented the poet William Ashbless while they were at Cal State Fullerton.
Another friend Powers first met during this period was noted science fiction writer Philip K. Dick; the character named "David" in Dick's novel VALIS is based on Powers and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner) is dedicated to him.
Powers's first major novel was The Drawing of the Dark (1979), but the novel that earned him wide praise was The Anubis Gates, which won the Philip K. Dick Award, and has since been published in many other languages.
Powers also teaches part-time in his role as Writer in Residence for the Orange County High School of the Arts where his friend, Blaylock, is Director of the Creative Writing Department. Powers and his wife, Serena, currently live in Muscoy, California. He has frequently served as a mentor author as part of the Clarion science fiction/fantasy writer's workshop.
He also taught part time at the University of Redlands.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
Most of Powers's novels are "secret histories": he uses actual, documented historical events featuring famous people, but shows another view of them in which occult or supernatural factors heavily influence the motivations and actions of the characters.
Powers was born in Buffalo, New York, and grew up in California, where his Roman Catholic family moved in 1959.
He studied English Literature at Cal State Fullerton, where he first met James Blaylock and K.W. Jeter, both of whom remained close friends and occasional collaborators; the trio have half-seriously referred to themselves as "steampunks" in contrast to the prevailing cyberpunk genre of the 1980s. Powers and Blaylock invented the poet William Ashbless while they were at Cal State Fullerton.
Another friend Powers first met during this period was noted science fiction writer Philip K. Dick; the character named "David" in Dick's novel VALIS is based on Powers and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner) is dedicated to him.
Powers's first major novel was The Drawing of the Dark (1979), but the novel that earned him wide praise was The Anubis Gates, which won the Philip K. Dick Award, and has since been published in many other languages.
Powers also teaches part-time in his role as Writer in Residence for the Orange County High School of the Arts where his friend, Blaylock, is Director of the Creative Writing Department. Powers and his wife, Serena, currently live in Muscoy, California. He has frequently served as a mentor author as part of the Clarion science fiction/fantasy writer's workshop.
He also taught part time at the University of Redlands.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 138 reviews
October 10, 2019
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!!
come to my blog!
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!!
come to my blog!
January 31, 2012
Gregorio Rivas used to be the best redemptionist in the business but now he's just a pelican gunner in a band in Ellay. At least, he was until the Distiller of the Treasury shows up and sends him on a mission: to rescue his daughter from the Jaybirds. Is Rivas still up to the task and can he keep from becoming one of Norton Jaybush's followers?
Tim Powers' books are always full of crazy ideas but this one takes the taco. Dinner At Deviant's Palace is a post-apocalyptic story with a level of weirdness that only Tim Powers can deliver. Brandy is used as currency. Bloodsucking monsters called hemogoblins are on the loose. The new Messiah is a rotund madman named Norton Jaybush and his crazed followers are the Jaybirds. Jaybush's sacrament is a weird psychic pulse that gradually erodes the mind of the Jaybird who receives it. There's also a street drug called Blood that is mysteriously similar to the sacrament. I said this was weird, right?
Gregorio Rivas goes from being a selfish musician to being something of a hero and has his ass repeatedly handed to him in the process. Powers never seems very sympathetic to his leads and Rivas is no exception.
Part of the fun of Dinner At Deviant's Palace is trying to decode what landmarks and cities in California Powers was referring to. Ellay is obviously Los Angeles, for instance.
I'd recommend this to all Tim Powers fans and also fans of post-apocalyptic fiction. Rivas isn't as tough as Snake Plissken but he gets the job done.
Tim Powers' books are always full of crazy ideas but this one takes the taco. Dinner At Deviant's Palace is a post-apocalyptic story with a level of weirdness that only Tim Powers can deliver. Brandy is used as currency. Bloodsucking monsters called hemogoblins are on the loose. The new Messiah is a rotund madman named Norton Jaybush and his crazed followers are the Jaybirds. Jaybush's sacrament is a weird psychic pulse that gradually erodes the mind of the Jaybird who receives it. There's also a street drug called Blood that is mysteriously similar to the sacrament. I said this was weird, right?
Gregorio Rivas goes from being a selfish musician to being something of a hero and has his ass repeatedly handed to him in the process. Powers never seems very sympathetic to his leads and Rivas is no exception.
Part of the fun of Dinner At Deviant's Palace is trying to decode what landmarks and cities in California Powers was referring to. Ellay is obviously Los Angeles, for instance.
I'd recommend this to all Tim Powers fans and also fans of post-apocalyptic fiction. Rivas isn't as tough as Snake Plissken but he gets the job done.
December 16, 2023
Deviant’s Palace
Steaks, Unconventional Seafood,
Progressive Cocktails
Meditation Chapel! Petting
Zoo! Souvenir Shop!
GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!
Explicit Scenes & Offensive Sounds
”People are so tasty when they’re truly embittered, truly despairing…and that’s when they come to Sevatividam. They can’t stand the bitter rain, so they run in under one of the two awnings — religion or dissipation — and guess who’s waiting for them under both awnings at once…”
”Some people, he thought, simply have no will to survive — they’re walking hors d’oeuvres waiting for someone who can spare the time to devour them. And while it’s probably some such unattractive quality as egotism or vanity that has kept me clear of that catastrophic relaxation, it’s the reason I’m still alive and able to think, and I’ll work on keeping it.”
This is not your typical Tim Powers book. Instead of occult hidden histories or strange twists on historical fiction, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace serves up a post apocalyptic man on a mission tale, with tasty sides of weird cultists, a decadent and dangerous drug trade, frightful mutations, and lethal biker gangs. Of course, this being Powers, the tropes are all twisted uniquely — the biker gang rides chopped out bicycles (fossil fuels are part of the remote past), the mutations have an uncanny, ghost-like quality, and a godlike alien intelligence is somehow at the heart of the weird cultist. And this all unfolds in Powers’ beloved California landscape, somehow still uniquely his despite being hundreds of years in the future and its post apocalyptic setting.
Dinner at Deviant’s Palace was winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. This feels particularly appropriate, as, out of all of Powers’ books, this one is the closest reflection of the work of his friend and mentor PKD. It’s themes of personal identity lost, surrendered, or stripped, of controlling alien intelligence, and its protagonist agonizing journey through his own identity crisis are all clearly influenced by PKD. But Powers, the student is a much better writer than was the master, PKD. Unlike Dick, Powers’ prose is elegantly constructed. His world building is masterful, and his characters are more than the sum of their traumas and anxieties. With Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, the student surpassed the master.
Steaks, Unconventional Seafood,
Progressive Cocktails
Meditation Chapel! Petting
Zoo! Souvenir Shop!
GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS!
Explicit Scenes & Offensive Sounds
”People are so tasty when they’re truly embittered, truly despairing…and that’s when they come to Sevatividam. They can’t stand the bitter rain, so they run in under one of the two awnings — religion or dissipation — and guess who’s waiting for them under both awnings at once…”
”Some people, he thought, simply have no will to survive — they’re walking hors d’oeuvres waiting for someone who can spare the time to devour them. And while it’s probably some such unattractive quality as egotism or vanity that has kept me clear of that catastrophic relaxation, it’s the reason I’m still alive and able to think, and I’ll work on keeping it.”
This is not your typical Tim Powers book. Instead of occult hidden histories or strange twists on historical fiction, Dinner at Deviant’s Palace serves up a post apocalyptic man on a mission tale, with tasty sides of weird cultists, a decadent and dangerous drug trade, frightful mutations, and lethal biker gangs. Of course, this being Powers, the tropes are all twisted uniquely — the biker gang rides chopped out bicycles (fossil fuels are part of the remote past), the mutations have an uncanny, ghost-like quality, and a godlike alien intelligence is somehow at the heart of the weird cultist. And this all unfolds in Powers’ beloved California landscape, somehow still uniquely his despite being hundreds of years in the future and its post apocalyptic setting.
Dinner at Deviant’s Palace was winner of the Philip K. Dick Award. This feels particularly appropriate, as, out of all of Powers’ books, this one is the closest reflection of the work of his friend and mentor PKD. It’s themes of personal identity lost, surrendered, or stripped, of controlling alien intelligence, and its protagonist agonizing journey through his own identity crisis are all clearly influenced by PKD. But Powers, the student is a much better writer than was the master, PKD. Unlike Dick, Powers’ prose is elegantly constructed. His world building is masterful, and his characters are more than the sum of their traumas and anxieties. With Dinner at Deviant’s Palace, the student surpassed the master.
March 28, 2018
Although I’ve prattled on about The Anubis Gates being my favourite Powers book, if I had to choose one that I’d recommend as an introduction to his work, it’s this one. The Anubis Gates, while brilliant, is a hefty, uncompromising adventure that asks you to stick with it even if you have no idea what the hell is going on. It rewards patience.
Dinner at Deviant’s Palace is a wham-slam post-apocalyptic adventure like no other. It’s more straight forward—if you can use that phrase to describe Powers’ writing—than The Anubis Gates, but showcases how he throws ideas together to create amazing, wondrous and terrifying worlds for his characters to explore. This one reads like a mash up of a Lovecraft novel with a blockbuster action film. It’s where we meet the unique and terrifying adversaries that have emerged from Powers’ imagination, like the haemogoblin, born from switching two letters in haemoglobin, but by no means a cheap play on words of a character. Far from it.
You could argue that Powers isn’t a great character writer, but I think his imagination and plotting offsets any lack of character development. Gregorio Rivas is certainly one of my favourite Powers’ heroes though. Okay, so he’s a classic type: a former doer of deeds who is pulled back into the game to rescue his lost love, but set against religious cults and a nuclear ravaged Los Angeles, he has as many secrets to reveal as the strange world he inhabits.
The book is so utterly readable. I’ve read it three times now and got something new out of every read. It’s no wonder my paperback copy has no spine, a worn cover and dog-eared pages. I’d better get myself a hardback.
Dinner at Deviant’s Palace is a wham-slam post-apocalyptic adventure like no other. It’s more straight forward—if you can use that phrase to describe Powers’ writing—than The Anubis Gates, but showcases how he throws ideas together to create amazing, wondrous and terrifying worlds for his characters to explore. This one reads like a mash up of a Lovecraft novel with a blockbuster action film. It’s where we meet the unique and terrifying adversaries that have emerged from Powers’ imagination, like the haemogoblin, born from switching two letters in haemoglobin, but by no means a cheap play on words of a character. Far from it.
You could argue that Powers isn’t a great character writer, but I think his imagination and plotting offsets any lack of character development. Gregorio Rivas is certainly one of my favourite Powers’ heroes though. Okay, so he’s a classic type: a former doer of deeds who is pulled back into the game to rescue his lost love, but set against religious cults and a nuclear ravaged Los Angeles, he has as many secrets to reveal as the strange world he inhabits.
The book is so utterly readable. I’ve read it three times now and got something new out of every read. It’s no wonder my paperback copy has no spine, a worn cover and dog-eared pages. I’d better get myself a hardback.
April 30, 2020
second read - 22 May 2010 **** - It had been so long since I last read it, that I really couldn't remember it very well. But I remember I didn't like it as much as I did this time. The novel starts as a post-apocalyptic story in the Los Angeles area, but after a while it becomes clear that there is more going on here. It seems an alien is living among the post-Angelinos, shaping a religion in order to feed its own psychic vampirism. Conceptually, this is all a little wierd, but really this is just a creatively imagined adventure story about Gregorio Rivas, itinerant musician and deprogrammer-for-hire. I especially enjoyed his becoming acquainted with Sister Windchime; sometimes I just wanted to shake Rivas and tell him to wake up.
first read - 1 January 1987 ** - Borrowed from my wife, but didn't care for it much.
first read - 1 January 1987 ** - Borrowed from my wife, but didn't care for it much.
October 12, 2007
An excellent post-apocalyptic speculative novel. It's a fast-paced yet strangely thoughtful exploration of loss, aging, drug addiction, and religion. It's a relatively short book but really packs a punch.
May 5, 2025
This is a post-apocalyptic novel published in the 80s. It combines a Greek myth about Orpheus, issues from the 70s and 80s (cults, rockers' motorbike bands, street drugs) is a semi-fantasy setting. I read it as a part of the monthly reading for May 2025 at Hugo & Nebula Awards: Best Novels group. The novel was first published in 1985 and won Philip K. Dick Award (1986) as well as was nominated on Nebula Award Nominee for Best Novel (lost to Ender’s Game), Locus Award Nominee for Best SF Novel (finished 7th, lost to The Postman).
In my edition, there is a preface where the author says that the first version was started by him in 1975. After reading Let Our Children Go! He made his protagonist a redeemer, a person, who takes a brainwashed cult member and returns his/her to normalcy.
The novel starts with Gregorio (Greg) Rivas, the protagonist, entering the city. His horse-driven carriage is “an old but painstakingly polished Chevrolet body mounted on a flat wooden wagon”. Such flashiness is because Rivas is a musician, a famous pelican gunner (guitarist) and he plans to earn a bit in local pubs. However, before starting a tour, he is approached with a proposal he cannot pass: ten thousand Ellay fifths (a king’s ransom in literally liquid currency) to redeem his first love, Urania (Uri), who was kidnapped by Jaybirds (cultists) just before her wedding. Rivas is the only man alive who has successfully redeemed six persons, and even though he is 31 and hasn’t been in this business for years, the first love prevails.
The story that follows shows how he gets into a cult, successfully withstands their brainwashing techniques but his infamy among cultists messes up his plans. More characters arrive… Overall, quite surprisingly, it reminded me of the first two installments of Fallout RPG, for while most details are quite different, some kind of ‘feel of the story’, and that most questions are more or less answered.
In my edition, there is a preface where the author says that the first version was started by him in 1975. After reading Let Our Children Go! He made his protagonist a redeemer, a person, who takes a brainwashed cult member and returns his/her to normalcy.
The novel starts with Gregorio (Greg) Rivas, the protagonist, entering the city. His horse-driven carriage is “an old but painstakingly polished Chevrolet body mounted on a flat wooden wagon”. Such flashiness is because Rivas is a musician, a famous pelican gunner (guitarist) and he plans to earn a bit in local pubs. However, before starting a tour, he is approached with a proposal he cannot pass: ten thousand Ellay fifths (a king’s ransom in literally liquid currency) to redeem his first love, Urania (Uri), who was kidnapped by Jaybirds (cultists) just before her wedding. Rivas is the only man alive who has successfully redeemed six persons, and even though he is 31 and hasn’t been in this business for years, the first love prevails.
The story that follows shows how he gets into a cult, successfully withstands their brainwashing techniques but his infamy among cultists messes up his plans. More characters arrive… Overall, quite surprisingly, it reminded me of the first two installments of Fallout RPG, for while most details are quite different, some kind of ‘feel of the story’, and that most questions are more or less answered.
July 11, 2014
Tim Powers became one of my favorite SF writers due to his book,"Anubis Gates." In this and other books of his that I've read, I've enjoyed his mix of SF and history with supernatural elements added in.In this one, it's another post-apocalyptic setting, although a cut above most of them.Set in L.A. after the bombs were dropped ( it was written in 1985, still during the Cold War), it concerns a mysterious cult which takes away people for a mysterious purpose. The hero is a guy known as a "redemptionist," who rescues people and also deprograms them.So it's interesting to find out more about the cult and its leader and what they are up to. I don't think this one was up to the level of other books of Powers' that I've read. but it still gets ****!
September 19, 2008
a pretty good post-apocalyptic tale. It had some truly horrific moments, some neat conceits (I especially liked the hemogoblin - a great name for a blood-sucking parasite) and the typical Powers reluctant hero. It felt a little average compared to his other books, though. Perhaps the setting felt a little dated.
April 27, 2021
Esta novela de Tim Powers me ha dejado un poco frío. Es bastante original respecto al futuro distópico creado, en el que la religión y sus poderes terrenales y “no terrenales” cobran otra dimensión. Pero se hace confusa y lenta a ratos, compensando con algunos momentos tensos en el que el protagonista lo pasa bastante mal.
De nuevo el alcohol tiene su papel protagonista en la novela de Powers pues, ni más ni menos, ¡es la moneda de este futuro distópico! Parece que ponerte tibio tendrá más importancia próximamente que comer, hidratarse o tener un hogar. Powers está obsesionado, de verdad…
Estamos ante una aventura de viaje, en el que al protagonista le encargan traer de vuelta a una antigua amiga suya que ha caído en las garras del radical culto que lidera Norton Jaybush. La misión más peligrosa a la que se ha enfrentado un redentor como Greg Rivas, profesión de la que se había retirado para dedicarse a la música.
Powers trabaja bien la novela, aunque quizá se alargan algunas escenas y otras parecen quedarse cortas.
De nuevo el alcohol tiene su papel protagonista en la novela de Powers pues, ni más ni menos, ¡es la moneda de este futuro distópico! Parece que ponerte tibio tendrá más importancia próximamente que comer, hidratarse o tener un hogar. Powers está obsesionado, de verdad…
Estamos ante una aventura de viaje, en el que al protagonista le encargan traer de vuelta a una antigua amiga suya que ha caído en las garras del radical culto que lidera Norton Jaybush. La misión más peligrosa a la que se ha enfrentado un redentor como Greg Rivas, profesión de la que se había retirado para dedicarse a la música.
Powers trabaja bien la novela, aunque quizá se alargan algunas escenas y otras parecen quedarse cortas.
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February 20, 2022Ne mogu da završim. Dosadno u tri lepe.
June 30, 2023
Too long but filled with interesting ideas and ghoulish concepts. Powers has no problem weaving the fantastic into his otherwise believable reality.
December 24, 2018
I first heard of Tim Powers as being one of the Laser book authors (#28. The Skies Discrowned by Timothy Powers, 1976, ISBN 0-373-72028-9 and #47. Epitaph in Rust by Timothy Powers, 1976, ISBN 0-373-72047-5). It was then I discovered that he was a colleague of Philip K.Dick. This sparked interest. I then heard a recent interview on the CBC radio with Tim Powers and found him to be an intelligent and engaging personality. "Dinner at Deviant's Place" is the first and only Powers novel I've read so far. I did not expect the style to be similar to PKD's and for the most part it was not. In this novel, however, the post-apocalyptic California setting was similar to PKD's non-genre novels and there were bits of true weirdness and elements such as these vampiresque bloodsucking creatures called hemogoblins.
However, this novel was hit and miss for me. The overall story is just fine: Gregorio Rivas a musician (song writer and decent pelican player) who had retired from his service of rescuing disciples of a religious cult known as the Jaybirds led by madman Messiah Norton Jaybush (a very Californian idea - as SNL's Drunk Uncle would say in his glass of rye: - "scientologist!") in order to rescue an acquaintance - no, this was actually potential girlfriend of thirteen years before, for a price one could not refuse by her wealthy and powerful father...
There are many cool bits and others that were dull and some that made little sense. The treatment of alcohol use, for instance, was utterly bizarre. Not only are fifth of bourbon considered currency, it seems that a stiff drink, of anything at all - beer, tequila... is the cure for every ill including (I think) brainwashing and mental illness. Not since the television show Bewitched (a perhaps the recent Mad Men series) have I seen alcohol treated this way in fiction.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and will read more from Tim Powers, though I suspect that this novel is not indicative of his usual or more recent work.
However, this novel was hit and miss for me. The overall story is just fine: Gregorio Rivas a musician (song writer and decent pelican player) who had retired from his service of rescuing disciples of a religious cult known as the Jaybirds led by madman Messiah Norton Jaybush (a very Californian idea - as SNL's Drunk Uncle would say in his glass of rye: - "scientologist!") in order to rescue an acquaintance - no, this was actually potential girlfriend of thirteen years before, for a price one could not refuse by her wealthy and powerful father...
There are many cool bits and others that were dull and some that made little sense. The treatment of alcohol use, for instance, was utterly bizarre. Not only are fifth of bourbon considered currency, it seems that a stiff drink, of anything at all - beer, tequila... is the cure for every ill including (I think) brainwashing and mental illness. Not since the television show Bewitched (a perhaps the recent Mad Men series) have I seen alcohol treated this way in fiction.
Overall, I enjoyed the book and will read more from Tim Powers, though I suspect that this novel is not indicative of his usual or more recent work.
May 2, 2019
I really loved this book. It's set in a future following some kind of societal collapse, and it brilliantly takes you into a world with generally medieval level technology, but with ruins and artifacts from the electricity age all around. The story follows Greg Rivas, a former cultist turned cult-deprogrammer turned musician, pulled back into performing one last 'redemption' when a former love is taken in by the cult.
But this cult is not ordinary, and as we read on it becomes clear that it has tendrils throughout the new world left behind after the collapse. There is a steady stream of hints, discoveries, and revelations that makes for compelling reading. Rivas himself is a flawed but likable character, who is changed significantly by the events of the story.
I don't really have anything to criticize about the book, it held me from start until end. The pace was good, with enough time for description and world building but no wasted words or meaninglessly dull moments. Tim Powers doesn't bludgeon you over the head with the backstory of the world either, instead leaving plenty to your imagination and observation. I thought the ending was good, though not exceptional - but that's being very picky when I enjoyed the journey to get there so much!
But this cult is not ordinary, and as we read on it becomes clear that it has tendrils throughout the new world left behind after the collapse. There is a steady stream of hints, discoveries, and revelations that makes for compelling reading. Rivas himself is a flawed but likable character, who is changed significantly by the events of the story.
I don't really have anything to criticize about the book, it held me from start until end. The pace was good, with enough time for description and world building but no wasted words or meaninglessly dull moments. Tim Powers doesn't bludgeon you over the head with the backstory of the world either, instead leaving plenty to your imagination and observation. I thought the ending was good, though not exceptional - but that's being very picky when I enjoyed the journey to get there so much!
April 29, 2021
It’s a century after some celestial or nuclear devastation of the west coast of the U.S. and the survivors are eking out short and violent existences however they can. Greg Rivas is a musician recently retired from redeeming (grabbing people back from the Jaybush cult, which uses some sort of hypnotic trance programming called the sacrament), when he succumbs to one last redeeming trip which must take him back into the clutches of the cult. Gradually Greg realises that his time with the cult has given him insights into how to stop the sacrament from affecting him so badly and he starts to know the thoughts of the mystical leader - whose real name is Sevatividam - and a terrifying realisation about its origin and its part in the devastation of Earth. Tim Powers takes us on a wild ride through a post-Apocalypse world of trance religions, junkmen robots containing human souls and an amoral psychic vampire who rules it all and may not even be human. Greg also learns that the knowledge of the leader’s thoughts go both ways however and Sevatividam’s revelations about Greg’s own less-than-savoury personality traits creates an epiphany and finally gives him and his hemogoblin doppelganger a way out. Fascinating stuff!
June 29, 2020
I must have read this first back in 1989, when Tim Powers was a GOH at Boskone, my first sf convention. I've read a lot of his stuff since then and see various themes recurring, the biggest one being that pain is needed to fuel magic (and magic as discovery of one's self). I couldn't remember much more than the beginning and ending of DDP, so pulled it from the To Read list. It's amazing that this is a first () novel. Good psychological breakdown of the main character, Greg Rivas. The women don't get POV status, and are seen through his eyes, so for reasons don't get limned as well, but we get a good variety, from the vicious Sister Sue, to the enlightened Sister Windchime, and the love object Uri. The villain is an odd one, an extraterrestrial crystal who is able to set himself up as a vampiric god. I love the idea of the hemogoblin. Often the quest is more about the journey and what the hero learns of themselves than about the holy grail, and that is explicitly stated in this novel.
My favorite Powers is still Anubis Gates.
My favorite Powers is still Anubis Gates.
November 14, 2025
Had I not known this was an Orpheus myth retelling, I wonder if I would have put that together. That being said, I love when Powers did with it.
The world building in this story is inventive, though not always fun. This story has a dark under current and just when you forget it, it reminds you.
I think people who love inventive post apocalyptic stories should definitely give this one a read.
The world building in this story is inventive, though not always fun. This story has a dark under current and just when you forget it, it reminds you.
I think people who love inventive post apocalyptic stories should definitely give this one a read.
July 30, 2017
I’ve been a fan of Tim Powers for years, ever since I read Last Call and Declare. There’s no one else quite like him in fiction. His books are strange and original and fantastical. Reading them is an immersive experience where you have to learn what’s going on with a minimum of expository text; you learn everything from context. Dinner at Deviant’s Palace is not a new book. It was originally published back in the 1980s. But because it was set in a future, post-apocalyptic version of Los Angeles, it doesn’t feel dated at all. Even early in his career, Powers’ style is still well developed and masterly...
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley at review consideration.
Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley at review consideration.
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September 22, 2013Reviewed at: Suite101.
Dinner at Deviant's Palace is a lavish, lucid, carefully crafted and extremely fun novel, a novel difficult to put aside, a novel you love to come back to, to listen to the wild music again, to fight the hemogoblin and crazy sect members and the Deviant himself, to be the hero rescuing the damsel in distress, and to fall in love again, while running away with nothing but doughnuts.
The review: Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers.
Dinner at Deviant's Palace is a lavish, lucid, carefully crafted and extremely fun novel, a novel difficult to put aside, a novel you love to come back to, to listen to the wild music again, to fight the hemogoblin and crazy sect members and the Deviant himself, to be the hero rescuing the damsel in distress, and to fall in love again, while running away with nothing but doughnuts.
The review: Dinner at Deviant's Palace by Tim Powers.
March 12, 2013
It started out as a five star. Great concept, great character, great world building without drowning me in either jargon or Fancy Future Wordz. It was recognizably a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles without hitting me over the head with it.
I also loved the plot, and the way the author ratcheted up the tension with the hemogoblin (something that could have easily been pure cheese).
In fact, the tension build was marvelously executed on multiple levels, and I think that might have been the problem. I'm not sure he knew where to go once he got it all wound up. I don't think the ending worked, either, not wholly.
But absolutely worth a read if you're into post-apocalyptic anything.
I also loved the plot, and the way the author ratcheted up the tension with the hemogoblin (something that could have easily been pure cheese).
In fact, the tension build was marvelously executed on multiple levels, and I think that might have been the problem. I'm not sure he knew where to go once he got it all wound up. I don't think the ending worked, either, not wholly.
But absolutely worth a read if you're into post-apocalyptic anything.
October 13, 2017
Greg Rivas is hired to find and deprogram a rich man's daughter after she joins a dangerous cult. A cult Rivas managed to walk away from years ago.
A science fiction wonderland, set in post apocalyptic California, the book pulls readers along at break neck pace as the mystery of the enigmatic Norton Jaybush, cult leader extraordinaire, is exposed.
A science fiction wonderland, set in post apocalyptic California, the book pulls readers along at break neck pace as the mystery of the enigmatic Norton Jaybush, cult leader extraordinaire, is exposed.
August 15, 2024
Solid weirdness. Good character writing in it too.
July 14, 2012
"They can't stand the bitter rain, so they run underneath one of the two awnings--religion or dissipation-- and guess who's waiting for them, under both awnings at once..." - Sevatividam
I freaking love Tim Powers. I'd like to just get that out of the way. The man flings ideas into the air and then makes them collide at high speeds, he helped invent the steampunk genre, and more than that, he tends to write books that unfold at equally high speeds with a lot of substance. Whether it's the Las Vegas sleaze hiding a soul-trading game in Last Call or the drug addiction novel centered around ghost-huffing that is Expiration Date, he manages to deliver. And while his book On Stranger Tides is getting made into a movie in the most terrible and sad way possible, it's still getting made into a movie, and that's kinda cool. Also, due to Tides, every time you see pirates and voodoo together in a movie (or a video game *coughcough* Monkey Island*coughcough*), it's officially Tim Powers' fault.
I first uncovered Dinner at Deviant's Palace in a Bookman's. It had no cover and no plot synopsis, just a simple yellow book in the sci-fi section. Granted, this didn't exactly endear me to it, as I kinda need some kind of synopsis to get an idea of what I'm getting into. Too many books titled things like The Vampires of Venice or things like that only to be about a bunch of war atrocities when I'm not in the mood for them. However, on a train last week, I found a copy of the paperback and dove right in. By three AM the next morning, I was done with the book. I finished it within a day, almost, and I have to say: It's one of the best freaking books I've read. And entirely unexpected as to the central ideas.
The book begins in post-nuke California with Gregorio Rivas, a musician, or "gunner", getting an odd request. One of the richest people in LA, Barrows, has lost a loved one to a religious cult called the Jaybirds. He pays Rivas five thousand "fifths" (playing cards used to represent brandy, the currency of this new world) to infiltrate the cult and bring her back home. You see, Rivas used to be a member of the cult who found out how sinister it actually was and ran away. He's also got a shady past as a "redemptionist", a combination of a cult deprogrammer and bounty hunter who tries to rescue wayward cultists and bring them back to their families by pretending to be cultists. And all of this has to do with his target: Barrows' daughter, Urania-- the former love of Rivas' life and what set him off on such a strange path on the first place. After much internal conflict, Rivas takes the job, infiltrates the Jaybirds to kidnap her back, and battles threats both external and internal in his quest, leading him to the titular event.
And to top it all off, it's a western about a man doing what has to be done, to save himself and to save others.
What I liked most about the book is the setting. While it becomes obvious that it's a post-apocalyptic setting where they use Brandy as currency and drive horse-drawn carriages made out of classic cars, it's very well-realized. Venice is presented as a sleazy den of sin with Deviant's Palace rising over it like some insane, nightmarish castle. The Holy City of Irvine is bright and clean from the outside, but filled with poverty and trash on the inside, with everyone being welded into leg-irons and forced to work. It's a world with its own slang, mannerisms, and rules of reality. Powers spent a lot of time on this for a book clocking in at under three hundred pages, and every bit of it shows. Despite the book being a slim, quick read, every page has a new facet of the world, be it the playing card-obsessed "Aces" who ruled the wasteland until an explosion went off and killed the Sixth, the alien intelligence known as Sevatividam, the history of Jaybird leader Norton Jaybush, and so on.
The problem, though, with Deviant's Palace is that it vanishes too far inside its character's own head. WAY too far sometimes. It's fine that we have a great sense of internal conflict, of Rivas fighting that impulse inside of him to join back up with the Jaybirds and let it consume him, but to have him living in his own head breaks immersion a little, like the scenes where he has flashbacks and can't tell past from present. While this sort of thing was merely disorienting and added to hallucinatory qualities in a book such as Private Midnight, it sometimes stops the book dead here, as the action is suddenly interrupted.
In fact, Private Midnight has a lot of similarities with Deviant's Palace. Both are books involving a rather driven man with a curious and dark past encountering a charismatic person who hints at being an otherworldly intelligence. But where one is a hallucinatory and strange tale of identity and how people can change, Deviant's is a book about being unable to run from who you are and knowing that icky, repugnant thing may not be pleasant to look at, but it's a part of you.
The other problem, and it's not really a problem, is the fantasy elements. It starts out as a post-apocalyptic western about a man fighting a cult, sort of like The Searchers if it was just John Wayne and he had to pretend to be an Apache for half the movie. But then you get the floating thing known as a Hemogoblin that claims to be a part of Rivas, the weirdness behind the "Sacrament", the restorative powers of "Peter and the Wolf" (which just makes me think of Peter Lorre in M), and a climax involving an alien psychic vampire. Or perhaps just some kind of mutant. And while the book should have ended there, you get a strange two-chapter epilogue just to tie up loose ends that didn't really need to be tied up. While the fantasy elements were still cool, and led to a fantastic setpiece, they didn't tie correctly into the book as well as they should have. Also, there's that stupid epilogue.
But you must read this book. It's a fast, brilliant ride, and while it's ugly and insane in places, it's all part of the charm. Besides, it rips a few satirical targets a good one, and is possibly the best post-apocalyptic and single-character book I've ever read. Rivas, despite starting out as a money-grubbing bastard, turns into a stone-cold badass by the end of the first section, and by the end he's a completely changed man, willing to throw himself in the way if it gets the job done, because his sanity-- and the sanity of his world-- are riding on the consequences. You feel every twist, every turn, and every triumph, and while the epilogue shoehorns a vague romance and tries to end things on a more ambiguous note, it's more than worth a read.
December 5, 2017
"To sing?" he demanded, his voice shrill with incredulous scorn. "You'd stop saving lives--souls!--to sit in a bar and sing? Oh, but you only did it while you needed the money, isn't that right? And now that you can fiddle for it, everybody else can... can be gutted and skinned, and it won't disturb your self-satisfaction even as much as a wrinkle in your precious costume would, huh? It must be nice to be the only person worthy of your concern."
Rivas was a redeemer: someone who was hired to find girls kidnapped by a religious cult and bring them back. But those days are in the rearview; now he earns his dime playing music at the local bar. 31, perpetually drunk, and a bit of sourpuss to boot. He's not interested in getting back into redeeming. But every man has a price, and in Rivas's case, the victim is a girl he loved long ago.
Dinner at Deviant's Palace is in dire need of rediscovery. While easily shelved as dystopian, it feels much more like a fantasy with some light steampunk undertones. (If you're as allergic to steampunk as I am, that may sound like a bad thing, but here it works really well--feels organic to the world.)
While at its core, it's a simple save-the-princess story, but the world Tim Powers crafts--and the society that inhabits it--is awesome. For much of the book Powers is able to convey an ongoing dread thanks to his primary antagonist (the Jaybirds, a hypnotic religion no one can stop, and its leader, Jaybush) and Rivas himself (a former hot shot redeemer who now feels all too fallible). I don't know that Rivas starts off likable, per se, but he's an engaging presence. And then he becomes likable.
Mix all of that with some really snappy prose. It's funny, while also shining light on human nature in a way that's really appealing. Consider:
I like the way, thought Rivas in almost honest puzzlement as he settled his knife back in its sleeve sheath and walked on, that every person in the world thinks his or her friendship is worth something.
or,
"You... damned... idiot."
"Aw, Jesus, brother, all I--"
"Shut up! Say Jaybush if you want to swear!"
or,
"You need me more than I need you, Rivas. I can--"
"Then you don't need me at all."
I think perhaps Dinner at Deviant's Palace befell the curse of having been released in the wrong decade. Dress it up in a modern cover (and maybe give it a title that doesn't scream Silence of the Lambs ripoff) and it might just start catching some eyes. Because, boy howdy, it deserves more eyes.
Rivas was a redeemer: someone who was hired to find girls kidnapped by a religious cult and bring them back. But those days are in the rearview; now he earns his dime playing music at the local bar. 31, perpetually drunk, and a bit of sourpuss to boot. He's not interested in getting back into redeeming. But every man has a price, and in Rivas's case, the victim is a girl he loved long ago.
Dinner at Deviant's Palace is in dire need of rediscovery. While easily shelved as dystopian, it feels much more like a fantasy with some light steampunk undertones. (If you're as allergic to steampunk as I am, that may sound like a bad thing, but here it works really well--feels organic to the world.)
While at its core, it's a simple save-the-princess story, but the world Tim Powers crafts--and the society that inhabits it--is awesome. For much of the book Powers is able to convey an ongoing dread thanks to his primary antagonist (the Jaybirds, a hypnotic religion no one can stop, and its leader, Jaybush) and Rivas himself (a former hot shot redeemer who now feels all too fallible). I don't know that Rivas starts off likable, per se, but he's an engaging presence. And then he becomes likable.
Mix all of that with some really snappy prose. It's funny, while also shining light on human nature in a way that's really appealing. Consider:
I like the way, thought Rivas in almost honest puzzlement as he settled his knife back in its sleeve sheath and walked on, that every person in the world thinks his or her friendship is worth something.
or,
"You... damned... idiot."
"Aw, Jesus, brother, all I--"
"Shut up! Say Jaybush if you want to swear!"
or,
"You need me more than I need you, Rivas. I can--"
"Then you don't need me at all."
I think perhaps Dinner at Deviant's Palace befell the curse of having been released in the wrong decade. Dress it up in a modern cover (and maybe give it a title that doesn't scream Silence of the Lambs ripoff) and it might just start catching some eyes. Because, boy howdy, it deserves more eyes.
September 28, 2017
He leaned back and looked out the window at the sunlit but still damp landscape. To the west he could see a green band that was the edge of the south farms, but to the south was nothing but the spread of tumbled, empty buildings, a scene lost somewhere between cityscape and landscape, animated by rolling tumbleweeds and, once in a while, the ragged figure of a scavenger too weak to venture very far from the Harbor.
After some unspecified event or events, California (and most likely the rest of the world) is a collection of semi-city-states; technological knowledge has fallen so far that even making bullets is beyond the ken. People use firearms, telephones, and other technological advancements as mystical props or as primitive clubs. Though turning antique firearms into spring-propelled-dart throwers is a new trend.
In this post-apocalyptic milieu we find Gregorio Rivas, a retired Redeemer who now makes a living off of his reputation and by playing the pelican—I think a form of violin—using a gun style like Yngwie Malmsteen.
He’s a gunslinger in a very strange world.
The reason this world has Redeemers is because of a cult of fanatical Jaybirds run by the mysterious messiah Norton Jaybush. Redeemers are what we would call cult deprogrammers, but the job’s a little more dangerous in Rivas’s world. Before he can start deprogramming a cult victim, he first needs to extract them from Jaybush’s very dangerous minions.
The danger is why he retired, and why he refuses to take any new jobs, regardless of the price.
Tim Powers has written a very exciting and compelling story around this basic idea. He mirrors our California in his atrophied California, from Los Angeles to Irvine, very well. Gregorio Rivas is a flawed hero; his flaws outnumber his qualities, if he even has any. But he’s also an interesting character in an interesting situation arising in a deranged mirror of a world.
May 10, 2020
Time: A century after the nuclear war.
Place: Ellay and environs.
Gregorio Rivas is a musician with several pieces of backstory.Some of them - like his time in the Jaybush cult - he keeps secret. Others - like his history of extracting cultists from the cult - are well-known and add to his mystique as a musician.His "gunning" style on the pelican (a sort of string instrument that is bowed and plucked, apparently at the same time) draws crowds to Spinks, the bar where he and his band have a residency.
This life is shattered when Irwin Barrows offers him a fortune to perform an extraction. Barrows, who brews the brandy that Ellay uses as currency, wants his daughter back. Greg would refuse, but he can't: Urania Barrows is the love he lost many years ago when her father threw him off the premises and the manor.
Greg agrees to do it, placing himself in multiple dangers: not only the danger of his life, but, worse, the danger of falling back into the cult as he tries to infiltrate it. The cult's "communion" - which consists simply of a Shepherd touching the communicant's forehead - has dire and addictive effects on the communicant, ultimately subsuming their will to that of Norton Jaybush and reducing the most far-gone to "speaking in tongues", a sort of babbling idiocy.
Powers creates a detailed and fascinating set of cultures around the ruins of Los Angeles and environs. Greg Rivas is a conflicted character who grows immensely during the course of the novel, moving from selfishness to heroism in manageable and plausible steps. He goes through seven kinds of Hell to get there, but he does.
Oh, and Deviant's Palace? It's a club in the ruins of Venice (California, not Italy) where only the invited may enter, and every perversion imaginable is indulged. Its link to the Jaybush cult is at the heart of the mystery Rivas must solve to save Urania Barrows - and maybe himself.
Place: Ellay and environs.
Gregorio Rivas is a musician with several pieces of backstory.Some of them - like his time in the Jaybush cult - he keeps secret. Others - like his history of extracting cultists from the cult - are well-known and add to his mystique as a musician.His "gunning" style on the pelican (a sort of string instrument that is bowed and plucked, apparently at the same time) draws crowds to Spinks, the bar where he and his band have a residency.
This life is shattered when Irwin Barrows offers him a fortune to perform an extraction. Barrows, who brews the brandy that Ellay uses as currency, wants his daughter back. Greg would refuse, but he can't: Urania Barrows is the love he lost many years ago when her father threw him off the premises and the manor.
Greg agrees to do it, placing himself in multiple dangers: not only the danger of his life, but, worse, the danger of falling back into the cult as he tries to infiltrate it. The cult's "communion" - which consists simply of a Shepherd touching the communicant's forehead - has dire and addictive effects on the communicant, ultimately subsuming their will to that of Norton Jaybush and reducing the most far-gone to "speaking in tongues", a sort of babbling idiocy.
Powers creates a detailed and fascinating set of cultures around the ruins of Los Angeles and environs. Greg Rivas is a conflicted character who grows immensely during the course of the novel, moving from selfishness to heroism in manageable and plausible steps. He goes through seven kinds of Hell to get there, but he does.
Oh, and Deviant's Palace? It's a club in the ruins of Venice (California, not Italy) where only the invited may enter, and every perversion imaginable is indulged. Its link to the Jaybush cult is at the heart of the mystery Rivas must solve to save Urania Barrows - and maybe himself.
May 17, 2018
I decided to read this for the title alone, and I have no regrets. It's a very enjoyable read, imaginative and with great world building, but falls a little flat in other areas.
The main character, Greg Rivas, is the generic selfish hard drinker who never quite got over his first love and now has to rescue her from a mind-bending cult. It is not a bad rendition of such a character template, and his personality does develop and soften, but its not a book to read for the character.
Instead the novel excels at building up the supernatural cult and its followers, as well as its impact on the world around it. For once the post-apocalyptic backdrop is not something to be solved in some way - either by figuring out what caused it or by returning to the good old days. But the decline of civilisation has made people naturally drawn to drugs or religion. Every follower longs to merge with the "Lord", and even Rivas finds his mind fogging up with the desire, loosing himself to the wider groupthink. The supernatural elements are tinged with a sense of horror as you read on and discover more about the cult. It really makes me want to seek out other cult-focused books.
Obstacles arise in his attempts at finding Uri (his long lost love), but they become so regularly paced and so quickly resolved that it felt at times like every 20 pages he might as well just have written [insert conflict here]. Many seem so tediously convenient I found myself laughing. After the first couple of conflicts everything seemed to lack tension as I knew it would be sorted instantly. The one time something dramatic and permanent does happen...It seems quite glossed over.
It's the first novel I've read by Powers, and since several of the reviews calls it one of his weaker books, I'd certainly consider reading another.
The main character, Greg Rivas, is the generic selfish hard drinker who never quite got over his first love and now has to rescue her from a mind-bending cult. It is not a bad rendition of such a character template, and his personality does develop and soften, but its not a book to read for the character.
Instead the novel excels at building up the supernatural cult and its followers, as well as its impact on the world around it. For once the post-apocalyptic backdrop is not something to be solved in some way - either by figuring out what caused it or by returning to the good old days. But the decline of civilisation has made people naturally drawn to drugs or religion. Every follower longs to merge with the "Lord", and even Rivas finds his mind fogging up with the desire, loosing himself to the wider groupthink. The supernatural elements are tinged with a sense of horror as you read on and discover more about the cult. It really makes me want to seek out other cult-focused books.
Obstacles arise in his attempts at finding Uri (his long lost love), but they become so regularly paced and so quickly resolved that it felt at times like every 20 pages he might as well just have written [insert conflict here]. Many seem so tediously convenient I found myself laughing. After the first couple of conflicts everything seemed to lack tension as I knew it would be sorted instantly. The one time something dramatic and permanent does happen...It seems quite glossed over.
It's the first novel I've read by Powers, and since several of the reviews calls it one of his weaker books, I'd certainly consider reading another.
September 27, 2025
Una oscura fantasia postapocalíptica de la que me habían avisado que no iba a encantarme: tenían razón. No sé qué ingrediente sobra o falta o, más probablemente, qué me falta a mí, pero no he empatizado con el protagonista ni otros personajes, la trama me ha parecido más lineal de lo deseable y el golpe de efecto final no me ha golpeado, quizá por la rápida resolución. Me leo y parece que lo odio, pero no es tan grave: es solo que no me ha llegado.
Lo recomiendo para quien disfrutase con esa enorme e incomprensible epopeya que es Dhalgren o, en tiempos más actuales, para quien haya leído City of Bohane y se haya quedado con ganas de más (que ya son ganas realmente).
Lo recomiendo para quien disfrutase con esa enorme e incomprensible epopeya que es Dhalgren o, en tiempos más actuales, para quien haya leído City of Bohane y se haya quedado con ganas de más (que ya son ganas realmente).
October 27, 2020
I wanted a scary book to read this October; this wasn't it. I chose it because it's been on my radar for a while and was on a bunch of lists circulating around. I don't know why they thought it was a frightening story, it's just not... at all. That said, it's and interesting hybrid of alien invasion sci-fi and post-apocalyptic fiction. I can definitely see why it won the Philip K. Dick Award; there's an extended hallucinatory scene in the middle that could have been pulled from The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch or A Scanner Darkly. Overall, though, a lot of it left me scratching my head as to why it was so acclaimed... and, again, why some find it frightening. Anyway, I give it a meh; it didn't push me totally away from Tim Powers, but I'll think twice before reading anything of his in the future.
May 1, 2021
I first read this book when I was 13 years old. Of course most of the subtlety was over my head then, but some of the vivid scenes stuck with me to this day, so on a whim, I picked it up again. Reading it now, I realize what a work of writerly craft this is, and clearly made by a talented writer early in his career, shaping his tools, finding out what works. The reluctant hero, the parasitic cult, the details of post-apocalypse Southern California that allude to the nature of the ancient catastrophe without spelling it out (the miles-wide glassed plain surrounding the Holy City was one of the images that lingered with me from the first reading)--it's memorable work. I don't know how I would have felt about it if I'd picked it up for the first time in the year 2021, but I found this book was a joy to return to.
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