What do you think?
Rate this book
Fault Lines #3
Earthquake Weather
A young woman possessed by a ghost has slain the Fisher King of the West, Scott Crane. Now, temporarily freed from that malevolent spirit, she seeks to restore the King to life.
But Crane's body has been taken to the magically protected home of Pete and Angelica Sullivan, and their adopted son, Koot Hoomie. Kootie is destined to be the next Fisher king, but he is only thirteen years old--too young, his mother thinks, to perform the rituals to assume the Kingship. But not too young, perhaps, to assist in reuniting Scott Crane's body and spirit, and restoring him to life.
But Crane's body has been taken to the magically protected home of Pete and Angelica Sullivan, and their adopted son, Koot Hoomie. Kootie is destined to be the next Fisher king, but he is only thirteen years old--too young, his mother thinks, to perform the rituals to assume the Kingship. But not too young, perhaps, to assist in reuniting Scott Crane's body and spirit, and restoring him to life.
627 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1997
33 people are currently reading
1202 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.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews
April 16, 2012
Dear Earthquake Weather,
I wanted to love you; I really did. Instead I just about like you, and not a lot.
It's not you; it's me. Really.
I loved Last Call, and that's where your whole ethos of transplanting grail myth and ancient gods to modern-day America began. I didn't read Expiration Date, which directly precedes you, and maybe that's why things didn't go well between us. It's my fault for not taking the time to get to know where you're coming from.
I've known and loved books of all sizes - but I found your 600 pages hard to deal with. I just didn't seem to have the time for your 400 pages of build-up or for the over-crowded rush of the last 50 pages; I wasn't willing to make the effort to care about your characters: the alcoholic widower, the split-personality girl, every personality unpleasant and some downright frightening, the self-righteous shrink-turned-bruja and her non-character husband, the adolescent Fisher King in waiting with, again, no character, and the unpleasant, gun-toting martinet - and these were the good guys.
And yet there was so much I wanted to like - I loved the way you wove Greek myth, speculative Shakespeare interpretations, the Mexican loteria cards and more into a frothy, bubbling whole. You're really good with free association and wordplay. There's a lot of eating and drinking and twists in well-known tales, from The Maltese Falcon to The Tale Of Two Cities. Three Latin palindromes at no extra cost! A really creepy villainous shrink with some truly bizarre methods.
Then why didn't it work out between us? Maybe it was just that you took too much for granted, let your bulk turn into flab rather than real heft. Maybe you were so caught up in weaving your strange magical-mythical stew that you lost track of character and plot structure.
Wow, your plot was all over the place; three different sets of people slowly converging, and I mean slowly, to actually reveal the main aim of the damned story - to resurrect the dead King - and then bungling around, making a botch of things just because they randomly won't listen to each other or the ghost guide they've summoned out of no apparent reason other than utter cussedness and wanting the novel to go on and on and on. I know life is messy; what's fiction's excuse? And it isn't like this some Beckettian novel of the absurdity of literature and language and possibly life; it's an exercise in a deeply plot-driven genre. And you just spent way too much time showing people eating, drinking and bickering. I know Robert Jordan was doing pretty well with novels like that at the time; were you just trying to be like the cool kids? Was that it?
Or no, really, it was me. I know you tried hard; I know I could have tried harder. I shouldn't have expected you to be another Last Call; that was unfair. Every novel can't be Last Call, and why should you? Please don't take this badly. I'm sure you'll find someone else.
This is goodbye,
JP
I wanted to love you; I really did. Instead I just about like you, and not a lot.
It's not you; it's me. Really.
I loved Last Call, and that's where your whole ethos of transplanting grail myth and ancient gods to modern-day America began. I didn't read Expiration Date, which directly precedes you, and maybe that's why things didn't go well between us. It's my fault for not taking the time to get to know where you're coming from.
I've known and loved books of all sizes - but I found your 600 pages hard to deal with. I just didn't seem to have the time for your 400 pages of build-up or for the over-crowded rush of the last 50 pages; I wasn't willing to make the effort to care about your characters: the alcoholic widower, the split-personality girl, every personality unpleasant and some downright frightening, the self-righteous shrink-turned-bruja and her non-character husband, the adolescent Fisher King in waiting with, again, no character, and the unpleasant, gun-toting martinet - and these were the good guys.
And yet there was so much I wanted to like - I loved the way you wove Greek myth, speculative Shakespeare interpretations, the Mexican loteria cards and more into a frothy, bubbling whole. You're really good with free association and wordplay. There's a lot of eating and drinking and twists in well-known tales, from The Maltese Falcon to The Tale Of Two Cities. Three Latin palindromes at no extra cost! A really creepy villainous shrink with some truly bizarre methods.
Then why didn't it work out between us? Maybe it was just that you took too much for granted, let your bulk turn into flab rather than real heft. Maybe you were so caught up in weaving your strange magical-mythical stew that you lost track of character and plot structure.
Wow, your plot was all over the place; three different sets of people slowly converging, and I mean slowly, to actually reveal the main aim of the damned story - to resurrect the dead King - and then bungling around, making a botch of things just because they randomly won't listen to each other or the ghost guide they've summoned out of no apparent reason other than utter cussedness and wanting the novel to go on and on and on. I know life is messy; what's fiction's excuse? And it isn't like this some Beckettian novel of the absurdity of literature and language and possibly life; it's an exercise in a deeply plot-driven genre. And you just spent way too much time showing people eating, drinking and bickering. I know Robert Jordan was doing pretty well with novels like that at the time; were you just trying to be like the cool kids? Was that it?
Or no, really, it was me. I know you tried hard; I know I could have tried harder. I shouldn't have expected you to be another Last Call; that was unfair. Every novel can't be Last Call, and why should you? Please don't take this badly. I'm sure you'll find someone else.
This is goodbye,
JP
December 12, 2023
The King is dead. Long Live the King!
Tim Powers brings his own, unique twist to the above phrase in Earthquake Weather, the the final volume of his Fault Line trilogy. The first two books in the series, Last Call and Expiration Date, are stand alone novels — set in the same universe, but telling separate tales. Earthquake Weather brings those two tales together, combining the characters and storylines of both into an overarching tale that completes the Fisher King mythos begun in Last Call. So take note — this book should only be read after completing those first two Fault Line novels.
Many characters from Last Call and Expiration Date make encore appearances here, but it’s a new character, Janis Plumtree, who animates the action in Earthquake Weather and captures our fascinated attention. Exposed to a violent, occult trauma as a toddler, Plumtree’s psyche is shattered into multiple personalities that may included a ghost and an evil possessing entity. These fractured personalities are in constant rotation throughout the story. Powers’s ghosts often appear mad, so it is no surprise that a mentally ill protagonist fits right in to the uncanny, ghostly milieu he creates.
Tim Powers fans will want to read this, but Earthquake Weather is not a necessary book. The revisited characters from earlier books mostly have truncated roles as all share the spotlight with each other and the new characters introduced here. A few are little more than ciphers. Powers included explanatory exposition on necessary details from the earlier books which adds bloat to a book that was already overlong and in need of editing. There is plenty of Powers’ brilliance on display, (his including the famous Winchester Mystery House as a vital part of his Fisher King mythos was a nice touch) but there’s too much slogging through dragging text to get to it.
Tim Powers brings his own, unique twist to the above phrase in Earthquake Weather, the the final volume of his Fault Line trilogy. The first two books in the series, Last Call and Expiration Date, are stand alone novels — set in the same universe, but telling separate tales. Earthquake Weather brings those two tales together, combining the characters and storylines of both into an overarching tale that completes the Fisher King mythos begun in Last Call. So take note — this book should only be read after completing those first two Fault Line novels.
Many characters from Last Call and Expiration Date make encore appearances here, but it’s a new character, Janis Plumtree, who animates the action in Earthquake Weather and captures our fascinated attention. Exposed to a violent, occult trauma as a toddler, Plumtree’s psyche is shattered into multiple personalities that may included a ghost and an evil possessing entity. These fractured personalities are in constant rotation throughout the story. Powers’s ghosts often appear mad, so it is no surprise that a mentally ill protagonist fits right in to the uncanny, ghostly milieu he creates.
Tim Powers fans will want to read this, but Earthquake Weather is not a necessary book. The revisited characters from earlier books mostly have truncated roles as all share the spotlight with each other and the new characters introduced here. A few are little more than ciphers. Powers included explanatory exposition on necessary details from the earlier books which adds bloat to a book that was already overlong and in need of editing. There is plenty of Powers’ brilliance on display, (his including the famous Winchester Mystery House as a vital part of his Fisher King mythos was a nice touch) but there’s too much slogging through dragging text to get to it.
January 8, 2017
EARTHQUAKE WEATHER was, unfortunately a bit of a slog to get through. Powers mashed together the worlds and characters of LAST CALL and EXPIRATION DATE, but although, like all Powers books, it had its moments, there were just too many characters that I didn't care about, and too much time spent with them all bickering while sitting around in a variety of rooms or vehicles. You know that long bit of the AVENGERS movie where they all act like spoiled kids? It's a bit like that, but goes on for longer.
The Fisher King mythology took too much of a back seat to the ghost plot devices for me in this one, and, like EXPIRATION DATE, I felt it suffered because of it. Personally I'd have liked more focus on the Tarot and archetypes to take center stage instead of the bickering characters and multiple real, and ghostly, personalities.
But again, like EXPIRATION DATE, a sub par Powers is still better than most everything else. It's just that my expectations had been set too high after the brilliance of LAST CALL.
The Fisher King mythology took too much of a back seat to the ghost plot devices for me in this one, and, like EXPIRATION DATE, I felt it suffered because of it. Personally I'd have liked more focus on the Tarot and archetypes to take center stage instead of the bickering characters and multiple real, and ghostly, personalities.
But again, like EXPIRATION DATE, a sub par Powers is still better than most everything else. It's just that my expectations had been set too high after the brilliance of LAST CALL.
January 14, 2020
*Need to Review
This book made me want to re-read the whole trilogy again! There are so many details that are woven together and come to a different light/connection/etc in this book. I actually listened to this one about 2x in order to make sure I had the events/details down pat.
Powers is one of the best authors of taking old fables/myths/weird and making them a part of today.
This book made me want to re-read the whole trilogy again! There are so many details that are woven together and come to a different light/connection/etc in this book. I actually listened to this one about 2x in order to make sure I had the events/details down pat.
Powers is one of the best authors of taking old fables/myths/weird and making them a part of today.
October 26, 2024
Eerie, allusive, flamboyant.
November 15, 2018
Earthquake Weather seems to get a lot of sass compared to the other two Fault Lines books, so I feel compelled to write a little about why I rated it 5 stars and why I think it's actually my favorite of the 3 Fault Lines books.
While Expiration Date has the most compelling hook of the three (ghost smokin') and Last Call may be the most tightly put together in terms of suspenseful plot (traded away my body in a poker game and got it back) Earthquake Weather shines far brighter than the other two in terms of _characterization_. I liked the pacing better too, but I liked the pacing better because of the superior characterization, so it's sort of a two-in-one there.
The characterization jumps leaps and bounds ahead of the other books simply for the reason of Plumtree alone (though everyone else who gets more than a cameo does pretty well too!). She's just the best built in terms of feeling like a real, lovable human of any of the characters in these three books. Neither in "Last Call" nor "Expiration Date" did I find myself rooting as consistently and on my edge of my seat as I did for Cody and for things to end up okay for her. Everything that goes well for her or bad for her feels really earned and emotionally real.
Other characters who get more than a cursory nod do well here too--Cochran's moment of weakness during chase the queen makes him both a little detestable but imminently relateable as someone who has been in love, and the emotional turn of how that relationship in his past shakes out is very visceral and real for people who have had their heart broken by someone who you cared a lot more about than they cared about you. Scott Crane, by contrast, is a much flatter character in "Last Call" (a real bland boy) and while I am INFAMOUS for forgetting the details of books if I go more than a few months from reading them, I _didn't even remember Pete Sullivan_ at first without my SO jogging my memory at the beginning of this book. Kootie, who was always the best written character of "Expiration Date", continues to shine in this book and Angelica fares pretty well. (Also Arky, because who doesn't love Arky?)
This book is also just much clearer written, at least as in comparison to Expiration Date. It was just easier to follow what was going on while still getting some of that Tim Powers "I'm obsessed with detail" flavor.
If you've read the other two Fault Lines books this is absolutely worth reading, for Plumtree alone, a character who is going to get a little corner of my heart for a good long time.
While Expiration Date has the most compelling hook of the three (ghost smokin') and Last Call may be the most tightly put together in terms of suspenseful plot (traded away my body in a poker game and got it back) Earthquake Weather shines far brighter than the other two in terms of _characterization_. I liked the pacing better too, but I liked the pacing better because of the superior characterization, so it's sort of a two-in-one there.
The characterization jumps leaps and bounds ahead of the other books simply for the reason of Plumtree alone (though everyone else who gets more than a cameo does pretty well too!). She's just the best built in terms of feeling like a real, lovable human of any of the characters in these three books. Neither in "Last Call" nor "Expiration Date" did I find myself rooting as consistently and on my edge of my seat as I did for Cody and for things to end up okay for her. Everything that goes well for her or bad for her feels really earned and emotionally real.
Other characters who get more than a cursory nod do well here too--Cochran's moment of weakness during chase the queen makes him both a little detestable but imminently relateable as someone who has been in love, and the emotional turn of how that relationship in his past shakes out is very visceral and real for people who have had their heart broken by someone who you cared a lot more about than they cared about you. Scott Crane, by contrast, is a much flatter character in "Last Call" (a real bland boy) and while I am INFAMOUS for forgetting the details of books if I go more than a few months from reading them, I _didn't even remember Pete Sullivan_ at first without my SO jogging my memory at the beginning of this book. Kootie, who was always the best written character of "Expiration Date", continues to shine in this book and Angelica fares pretty well. (Also Arky, because who doesn't love Arky?)
This book is also just much clearer written, at least as in comparison to Expiration Date. It was just easier to follow what was going on while still getting some of that Tim Powers "I'm obsessed with detail" flavor.
If you've read the other two Fault Lines books this is absolutely worth reading, for Plumtree alone, a character who is going to get a little corner of my heart for a good long time.
April 18, 2009
A two-fer. A reintegration of old mythologies into modern California, and a recasting of personal struggles within a supernatural framework.
The foundation is that in the 1800's Dionysus transplanted his domain from France to California, the Fisher King is his human representative tied to the earth and the ocean, and the Fisher King has just died causing a period of earthquakes during the struggle for succession. Ancient and Californian lore are blended in strange and wonderful ways. For example, the Winchester Mystery House was build by the daughter-in-law of Oliver Winchester whose middle name was Fisher (all true) and therefore must have been a possible Fisher King.
Blended into this mix are a slew of characters with a transformed depiction of normal troubles. The story of a boy entering manhood is shown as Koot Sullivan having to take up the power and burdens of the Fisher King. The story of a dysfunctional family is shown as Janis Plumtree who is possessed by spirits of her mother and father. The story of grief is shown as Sid Cochran torn between summoning or letting go the ghost of his wife.
And for a bonus we get quotes from Troilus and Cressida, Richard II, and The Tale of Two Cities.
The main difficultly with the book is that it is simply too much. Many of Tim Power's books start from a mostly normal situation and gradually add supernatural overtones. This book starts with the full crazy and rarely slows down. It is a loose sequel to Expiration Date and Last Call and I'd strongly suggest reading at least one of those first.
The foundation is that in the 1800's Dionysus transplanted his domain from France to California, the Fisher King is his human representative tied to the earth and the ocean, and the Fisher King has just died causing a period of earthquakes during the struggle for succession. Ancient and Californian lore are blended in strange and wonderful ways. For example, the Winchester Mystery House was build by the daughter-in-law of Oliver Winchester whose middle name was Fisher (all true) and therefore must have been a possible Fisher King.
Blended into this mix are a slew of characters with a transformed depiction of normal troubles. The story of a boy entering manhood is shown as Koot Sullivan having to take up the power and burdens of the Fisher King. The story of a dysfunctional family is shown as Janis Plumtree who is possessed by spirits of her mother and father. The story of grief is shown as Sid Cochran torn between summoning or letting go the ghost of his wife.
And for a bonus we get quotes from Troilus and Cressida, Richard II, and The Tale of Two Cities.
The main difficultly with the book is that it is simply too much. Many of Tim Power's books start from a mostly normal situation and gradually add supernatural overtones. This book starts with the full crazy and rarely slows down. It is a loose sequel to Expiration Date and Last Call and I'd strongly suggest reading at least one of those first.
May 12, 2011
While Expiration Date happens after Last Call, only a few minor characters crossed over. Earthquake Weather takes the surviving characters from the first two books and adds a few more to finally give the books a true sequel.
This book does address one of the main weaknesses of the first two books. This time around, the main protagonists meet up early in the narrative, and we don't need to wait until the book is almost over for the stories to intertwine. The new characters seem better defined, no longer just a mere quirk or two (though that does still happen once or twice).
In addition, this book makes the first two better by placing them in a different context. For example, the similarities between plots and protagonists of the first two books are explained and make sense.
However, we're introduced to yet a third paranormal world. While we haven't left the tarot or ghosts behind in the least, the rules of Dionysus have been layered on top. And the book does move towards a big finish that has to follow rules we don't understand at all.
Despite these problems, this was the one book of the trilogy I was engaged with the most, and raced to read. There's enough explanation of the events from the first two books so you might want to just skip those and read this one, but reading all 3 was certainly a better experience than any one individual book. This is one time where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts.
This book does address one of the main weaknesses of the first two books. This time around, the main protagonists meet up early in the narrative, and we don't need to wait until the book is almost over for the stories to intertwine. The new characters seem better defined, no longer just a mere quirk or two (though that does still happen once or twice).
In addition, this book makes the first two better by placing them in a different context. For example, the similarities between plots and protagonists of the first two books are explained and make sense.
However, we're introduced to yet a third paranormal world. While we haven't left the tarot or ghosts behind in the least, the rules of Dionysus have been layered on top. And the book does move towards a big finish that has to follow rules we don't understand at all.
Despite these problems, this was the one book of the trilogy I was engaged with the most, and raced to read. There's enough explanation of the events from the first two books so you might want to just skip those and read this one, but reading all 3 was certainly a better experience than any one individual book. This is one time where the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts.
December 17, 2017
I'm very torn on writing this review. The first time I read Earthquake Weather (when it came out, some 20 years go) I was really impressed. This time through I just could not get traction on it, and it ended up feeling much more disjointed than the other two books in this series.
Last Call was the secret magical history of Las Vegas, and every element in - the poker game, the tarot cards, the fisher king, Lake Mead Bugsy Segal - it flowed from the nature of the story, with the magic used built around the story and the setting.
Expiration Date was a look at the magical underbelly of Los Angeles linked to the history of Edison and Houdini. Again, every element drew from those points, and the story and magic used were both tied to it.
Earthquake Weather is trying to meld the two, while also adding the secret history of San Francisco, and the other two books many of the elements, especially the Winchester House, felt like they were included not because they really fit the story but because they were in San Francisco. The magical logic ends up feeling more ad hoc than organic, and the story feels overstuffed.
It doesn't help that much of the story relies on an a multiple personality disorder character to move forward, which now, to me at least, just screams of being mid 90's trendy. Yes, Powers puts a spin on it with the ghosts, but it's still such a dated thematic reference that it hurt the book for me, at least on this read.
Obviously this is an idiosyncratic review, and probably one I would have discounted 20 years ago, so take it with a big grain of salt.
Last Call was the secret magical history of Las Vegas, and every element in - the poker game, the tarot cards, the fisher king, Lake Mead Bugsy Segal - it flowed from the nature of the story, with the magic used built around the story and the setting.
Expiration Date was a look at the magical underbelly of Los Angeles linked to the history of Edison and Houdini. Again, every element drew from those points, and the story and magic used were both tied to it.
Earthquake Weather is trying to meld the two, while also adding the secret history of San Francisco, and the other two books many of the elements, especially the Winchester House, felt like they were included not because they really fit the story but because they were in San Francisco. The magical logic ends up feeling more ad hoc than organic, and the story feels overstuffed.
It doesn't help that much of the story relies on an a multiple personality disorder character to move forward, which now, to me at least, just screams of being mid 90's trendy. Yes, Powers puts a spin on it with the ghosts, but it's still such a dated thematic reference that it hurt the book for me, at least on this read.
Obviously this is an idiosyncratic review, and probably one I would have discounted 20 years ago, so take it with a big grain of salt.
September 17, 2012
This is a sequel to two other books by Tim Powers, one Last Call and another Expiration Date. I liked Last Call a lot. Expiration Date was also pretty good but I enjoyed it less. This book was a combination of the two with characters from both and a fusion of the various supernatural rules from both. The end result was that there was too much of everything. Too many characters, too many supernatural elements. One of the things I like about some of Tim Powers books is that the supernatural slowly leaks in to a realistic world. This book starts out swimming in the supernatural and it only gets deeper. In addition, most of the story is told from the point of view of some new characters that I find unapealing.
August 19, 2008
The first section of the book felt somewhat disorienting and fractured, which may have been a purposeful reflection of Janis/Cody/et al Plumtree's multiple personalities. As Plumtree and her new-met friend Cochran meet up with the companions (all familiar from the first two books of the Fault Lines series), the book begins to gain cohesion. In part, this is because the enlarged cast has a single primary goal which provides a focus to both the novel and the characters, even as each of the characters has his or her own personal goals and motivations. Amazingly, Power's manages to bring the multiple threads of plot and character development to a satisfactory conclusion.
April 17, 2025
Третий том собирает всех героев из первой книги про карты и второй про призраков, живых повзрослевших и мертвых тоже. Получается немного тяжеловесно и многословно, местами теряешься в хитросплетениях сюжета и забываешь кто там что и зачем, особенно когда в голове героини не один, не два и даже не три духа внутри, а больше, и они постоянно меняют друга друга, другой персонаж приделывает по бокам манекены, которые в финале тоже вроде оживают. Еще есть настоящие боги, да.
November 23, 2016
Not as good as the previous two in the trilogy, but not bad. In this one, Powers tried to pull #1 and #2 together, but for me it didn't quite work. There were too many characters, and their voices weren't distinct enough from each other. Also, and this is just me, I don't find wine, its flavor, history, agriculture, as magical and fascinating as some people do, Powers among them. Cards, from their tarot forebears to contemporary games of chance and risk were the "them," so to speak, of the first one, so Powers's use of them in "Last Call" really got my interest. I'll definitely be reading more of his work.
September 3, 2011
I just had a really hard time suspending my disbelief. Tarot archetypes? Sure. Ghosts? Sure. Dionysus? Sure. All in the same book? ...Maybe not. I also feel like the blurb really billed this as a team-up between the groups from the other two books, when most of the book was pretty much everyone from the second book, plus Arky from the first book. (And apparently Plumtree was in the first book, too, but I don't remember her and I don't have the book to check anymore.) I liked the characters in the first book much better, and was never as invested in Angelica, Pete, or Kootie.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 22, 2009
This is a sequel of sorts to Last Call and Expiration Date, bringing the (previously unconnected) sets of characters from both of these books together with a few new characters. It's not without a few blips, but I really love one of the new characters, and most of the secret history (of wine and Dyonisis) that is particular to this book. The new crop of ghosts are even more entertaining then Thomas Edison, and there is a welcome cameo from Nardie Dinh.
February 18, 2013
I'll give this 4 stars instead of 3 for the shear creative explosion that pits voodoo queens, Dionysian cults, and a one-armed looney against each other in present-day San Francisco. Mix in a love story and the good old fashion power-politics of the undead, and you've got Earthquake weather.
The writing gets a little tedious at times, but overall there are enough fresh ideas to make it fun.
The writing gets a little tedious at times, but overall there are enough fresh ideas to make it fun.
December 29, 2013
Meh.
The first half was pretty tedious,occasionally punctuated by somewhat fast paced sections. The second half was a much more enjoyable read, but overall there was just too much fluttering about the awesomeness of the realm of magic without actually generating enough interest to make the magic and the background story seem that awe inspiring.
The first half was pretty tedious,occasionally punctuated by somewhat fast paced sections. The second half was a much more enjoyable read, but overall there was just too much fluttering about the awesomeness of the realm of magic without actually generating enough interest to make the magic and the background story seem that awe inspiring.
April 8, 2015
Loved the first book, the second book seemed 99% unrelated and just ok, the third book mashed the first two together in a way I found really uncompelling. Reading this book seemed like a chore. If I had it to do over, I'd just read the first book and give the second two a pass.
November 16, 2018
"The word 'impossible' isn't what it used to be, for any of us."
So says a character in "Earthquake Weather," and no, it sure isn't. Tim Powers' concluding novel in what became for most readers an unexpected trilogy (only the very sharpest could have thought "Last Call" and "Expiration Date" were related at the time; "EW" is sort of a merging of the two worlds) certainly can't match its predecessors, but is still worth reading even with its bloat.
In "Earthquake Weather," Scott Crane, the star of "Last Call" (and totally absent from "Expiration Date"), the new Fisher King of the American West based in California, is murdered by the male part of a woman with multiple personalities. Crane is dead, but he's not dead-dead, and our heroes from the casts of the two books eventually come together in an effort to bring him back to life — or crown a new king.
It's more Powers fun with ghosts, gods, earthquakes, wine (Dionysus appears, after all) and the supernatural in an otherwise real-life California, though admittedly not as fun as the superb "Last Call" and "Expiration Date" would lead you to expect.
Powers' introduction of the newcomers to this merged world, two patients in a psychiatric hospital — one the woman harboring in her personalities Crane's killer — is painfully slow. The quick-hits and meaningful world-building of "Expiration Date" get thrown out the window amid some true literary fat.
It gets better, though, after these hundred-plus pages, and the epilogue is actually terrific, though getting there can be a bit confusing.
It's apparent that Powers must have planned to fuse the ideas of "Last Call" and "Expiration Date" all along, but he seems to have, well, not necessarily run out of gas as to gas up this sucker to the top and drive slowly so it could go as far as possible. Plain and simple, "Earthquake Weather" is too long. Trimming would have worked wonders, but the truth is the plot just doesn't quite have the goods that the other two books do. There's good stuff here, but it's a bit disappointing considering what preceded it and the quality of the rest of Powers' work.
And no, you should definitely not read this book if you haven't read the others. The first two, frankly, can be read in any order, but "Last Call" was published first.
So says a character in "Earthquake Weather," and no, it sure isn't. Tim Powers' concluding novel in what became for most readers an unexpected trilogy (only the very sharpest could have thought "Last Call" and "Expiration Date" were related at the time; "EW" is sort of a merging of the two worlds) certainly can't match its predecessors, but is still worth reading even with its bloat.
In "Earthquake Weather," Scott Crane, the star of "Last Call" (and totally absent from "Expiration Date"), the new Fisher King of the American West based in California, is murdered by the male part of a woman with multiple personalities. Crane is dead, but he's not dead-dead, and our heroes from the casts of the two books eventually come together in an effort to bring him back to life — or crown a new king.
It's more Powers fun with ghosts, gods, earthquakes, wine (Dionysus appears, after all) and the supernatural in an otherwise real-life California, though admittedly not as fun as the superb "Last Call" and "Expiration Date" would lead you to expect.
Powers' introduction of the newcomers to this merged world, two patients in a psychiatric hospital — one the woman harboring in her personalities Crane's killer — is painfully slow. The quick-hits and meaningful world-building of "Expiration Date" get thrown out the window amid some true literary fat.
It gets better, though, after these hundred-plus pages, and the epilogue is actually terrific, though getting there can be a bit confusing.
It's apparent that Powers must have planned to fuse the ideas of "Last Call" and "Expiration Date" all along, but he seems to have, well, not necessarily run out of gas as to gas up this sucker to the top and drive slowly so it could go as far as possible. Plain and simple, "Earthquake Weather" is too long. Trimming would have worked wonders, but the truth is the plot just doesn't quite have the goods that the other two books do. There's good stuff here, but it's a bit disappointing considering what preceded it and the quality of the rest of Powers' work.
And no, you should definitely not read this book if you haven't read the others. The first two, frankly, can be read in any order, but "Last Call" was published first.
April 12, 2019
Well this was 600+ pages of a chaos filled runaway train. I guess you should expect as much from a book about the wine fueled magic of Dionysus. Seriously I really enjoyed this, but I'm glad its over that was an exhausting read. There was just so much!!! Right from the start this was a heart pounding action filled plot, loaded with ghosts, possessions, transportations, god powers, and drunkeness. Not to mention the main protaganist was also the antagonist as she had multi personality disorder. I loved Last Call by Powers, it was just such a unique form of god magic, the Fisher King and the Moon Goddess and playing an ancient game of chance to acquire the power. And the high speed vegas plot line was really cool. So then when I checked out expiration date, which is all about Ghosts and possesions I thought that has nothing to do with Last Call how is that a sequel. This book not only ties the two stories together it really helped me make sense of the mechanics behind the body swapping and gaining of the powers. And actually after reading this I feel like Drawing of the Dark, Tims first successful Novel is a bit a prequel to this. In fact it definitely uses the same magic system anyway. A lot of people gave this mixed reviews, I can see why its absolutely nuts, and over loaded with madness and has a lot to keep track of. I was able to follow along but I've read a lot of powers so I feel I was prepared for it. One of the tricks, I find with Tims books are you have to expect to be completely confused at times.
May 28, 2023
Almost exactly as if he'd planned it that way, the third Fault Lines volume draws together the first and second in an epic conclusion to the saga. The King Of the West is dad (that's a mis-type, but I'm leavng it in because it looks like a Dad joke, as in hello King Of the West, I'm Dad), murdered by a woman with multiple personality disorder currently languising in a mental hospital under the sinister care of a creepy psychiatrist. Meanwhile the body of the dead king, which shows no sign of decay, has turned up at the home of Cootie, the presumptive heir. This is all very upsetting for everyone involved, but things are only going to get worse as efforts to revive Scott Crane involve various dangers and heavy costs. This is as motley a collection of the lost, the weird and the broken as have ever graced a Powers novel, and the history of wine-growing in America and the msyterious Winchester House and the god Dionysius all play a part in the grueling quest. Grueling for the characters, that is. The reader just goes along with wide eyes and/or ears if they're listening.
March 16, 2018
This is the third book in a trilogy in which the first two books, Last Call and Expiration Date, each read as two completely different and independent novels. Earthquake Weather fuses the previous novels in a direction that were not anticipated, at least not by me, from the way they concluded. This was the second time I’ve read Earthquake Weather which I have very fond memories of enjoying immensely. I again found myself enjoying this yarn but for whatever reasons this time around it was kind of a long strange slog.
It was great to have the characters from the previous two books return and meet each other in another Powers fueled tale that combines the familiar with the absolutely bizarre. In the end Earthquake Weather isn’t as good as Last Call and Expiration Date but it still satisfies.
It was great to have the characters from the previous two books return and meet each other in another Powers fueled tale that combines the familiar with the absolutely bizarre. In the end Earthquake Weather isn’t as good as Last Call and Expiration Date but it still satisfies.
November 10, 2021
This installment is very similar to the second book in the series. I thought this would be much better however, since we were returning to the mind of Scott Crane, but it did not work out that way at all. In fact, I felt there were multiple times where the book dragged in places where it didn’t have to, and there were times that the story became almost unreadable in its assumptions about what a reader suspension of disbelief must be to understand what was being said. Maybe Powers wanted this book to be modern day Shakespeare in that you could not read it at face value, that this should be the modern ‘ghost catcher’, or maybe it just sucked, but it was hard to read at times, accounting for the length of real time it took to get through this one. In any event, I can see why these later novels were simply not as popular as some of his others.
November 5, 2023
Well, I slogged through all 800 pages of this wildly unfocused and incredibly aimless novel, not caring about any of the characters and vehemently annoyed by Tim Powers's endless conceptualizing. Powers can write (see LAST CALL), but his storytelling faculties seem to have left him here. There's some promise within the mental hospital scenes, but ultimately Powers comes across as a highly obnoxious autodidact who thinks he's clever ("See, Fisher King reference, bro!"), but who is really a rambling lout who has been kicked out of every bar in town except the one you're sitting at and who insists on talking to you. You just want the guy to shut the fuck up and go home and sleep it off. Really, I can't overstate how awful this tedious and unedited novel is.
July 8, 2021
Strangely this closing book is the least engaging, exciting and compelling of the trilogy. I do get that trying to tie the all loose ends from the previous books was a titanic task. But even for an action packed tome like this the pace is plodding, some descriptions are confusing and do not enhance the atmosphere.
The Plumtree/Scant storyline is perhaps the least compelling, even if she was a potentially super interesting character. The psychiatrist/villain shows initial promise but dilutes over the course.
I don't want to talk about the ending, but suffice it to say that it fizzles out.
The Plumtree/Scant storyline is perhaps the least compelling, even if she was a potentially super interesting character. The psychiatrist/villain shows initial promise but dilutes over the course.
I don't want to talk about the ending, but suffice it to say that it fizzles out.
January 21, 2024
Too long. It's also not clear why anything is happening for much of the book. The rules of magic are opaque, and that sucks much of the enjoyment out for me. People are just doing stuff and I don't know what the point is. I loved Last Call, and forced myself to finish Expiration Date because this book was supposed to bring the two together, but it wasn't worth it.
I liked the exploration of living with and loving someone with multiple personalities, but overall it suffered from Powers's regular issue of really really slow build followed by a too rapid climax. It was just about forgivable in Declare, but not here.
I liked the exploration of living with and loving someone with multiple personalities, but overall it suffered from Powers's regular issue of really really slow build followed by a too rapid climax. It was just about forgivable in Declare, but not here.
dnf
September 28, 2023DNF. Powers' fiction is usually quite enthralling, but the second and third of this set . . . not so much.
Expiration Date barely kept me going, and this one's leaving me absolutely cold. I'm not even sure why, they're full of Powers' ancient myths brought into the modern world, something I usually love about his writing, maybe this particular set just doesn't interest me as much.
No rating because they're written as well as the rest of Powers' oeuvre, they're just not catching my interest.
Expiration Date barely kept me going, and this one's leaving me absolutely cold. I'm not even sure why, they're full of Powers' ancient myths brought into the modern world, something I usually love about his writing, maybe this particular set just doesn't interest me as much.
No rating because they're written as well as the rest of Powers' oeuvre, they're just not catching my interest.
July 5, 2017
Earthquake Weather is Tim Powers' third book in the Fault Lines trilogy. Powers wraps up all the weirdness of the first two into something even stranger than either. In much the same way Last Call and Expiration Date were about the Fisher King and the sad not-quite-life of ghosts, Earthquake Weather is about a desperate quest to appease Dionysus, god of wine and death.
Also, much like Last Call and Expiration Date, this is also a novel about mental illness, and the indignities and injustice of our attempts to treat the most serious cases, in the mold of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Janis Cordelia Plumtree, sufferer of multiple personality disorder, and unwilling ward of the state of California, personifies the mostly invisible struggles of everyone whose mind is broken in some serious way.
Multiple personality disorder is no longer considered a serious diagnosis, a fact noted by Angelica Sullivan in the book, but with magical means Powers is able to make it more real than the real world. Plumtree doesn't just have different personalities, she has different people inhabiting her body on a daily basis. Janis tries to keep a bottle of mouthwash handy, because she finds it disturbing that someone else's spit is in her mouth. In this case, that is a totally reasonable thing to do, and the oddly specific nature of this complaint makes me wonder if Powers stumbled on this example in his research for the book.
Janis and the exceptionally ill-fated Sid Cochran meet up with all of the characters from Last Call and Expiration Date to complete the quest for Dionysus. What follows is typical Powers, and I won't explore the plot here, because I think the grand concept of the whole trilogy is more interesting, and also more subtle. The first time I read this book, I found it both strangely disturbing, and a little ho-hum. As Powers' books go, the plot doesn't seem as tightly wound, and the large ensemble cast from the previous two books can be hard to keep track of. That explains the ho-hum feeling.
It is the disturbing part that I only recently figured out. I find the quest to win the favor of the god Dionysus horrifying, because the boons he offers seem to be worse than enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. For example, the pagadebiti, Dionysus' wine of forgiveness and a central feature of both the backstory and the quest, exacts a steep price: you must surrender to Dionysus every memory and emotion you have regarding he person involved. For Sid Cochran, his role in the quest is to offer up his beloved and freshly dead wife Nina [who it turns out was really married to Dionysus using Sid as a proxy] and their unborn child to Dionysus as a peace offering or gesture of goodwill.
This strikes me as very odd, but I didn't realize why until the third time through the book. The key bit in that realization was a story told about St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. St. Margaret started having visions of Christ. In a prudent move, he approached her confessor and told him about them. The confessor, a stolid sort who knew that most reports of visions were just fantasies or hallucinations, asked her to query Christ in her visions and report back to him. St. Margaret dutifully did so, and the confessor was surprised to find his questions had been answered accurately. At this point, he got suspicious, since Catholics take Satanic temptation seriously. He asked St. Margaret to ask Christ what sins he had confessed last week.
St. Margaret reported back: "He told me he did not know. He said he had forgotten." The priest was dumbfounded by this, because he had expected to have his sins thrown back in his face. What he got instead, was mercy. The sacrament of reconciliation, popularly known as confession, only asks for honesty and penitence. The only forgetting that happens is apparently on God's part, as mysterious as that sounds. I used to think that it was a burden to remember all the sins you have been forgiven, but Powers showed me that it is not.
What I think Powers has done with Earthquake Weather is to write a negative theodicy. A complaint often advanced against theism in general, and Christianity in particular, is that a just god could not allow for so much unjust suffering in the world. If God were truly good, and truly all powerful, then it would be simple to alleviate the cries of the poor, for example.
Using myth, Powers has written for us the world that would result from the attentions of a god that is good, after a fashion, but willing to force his intentions onto people to guarantee results. By the end of Earthquake Weather, nearly every character has been found to be the pawn of Dionysus in some fashion. Even Sherman Oaks, the villain of Expiration Date, is in his service. I also realized that Dionysus is so terrible because he is so just. Everyone gets what they deserve. Precisely.
If you've lived in Christendom your whole life, you probably don't expect this. Neil Gaiman's books helped me realize that people playing at paganism in the United States and Europe are almost always just lapsed Christians. These, and the internet atheists, are the quarters from which complaints about God's goodness usually come. As Chesterton noted in The Everlasting Man, they haven't actually managed to get far enough away from Christianity to judge it accurately.
In his way, I think Powers is trying to help.
Also, much like Last Call and Expiration Date, this is also a novel about mental illness, and the indignities and injustice of our attempts to treat the most serious cases, in the mold of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Janis Cordelia Plumtree, sufferer of multiple personality disorder, and unwilling ward of the state of California, personifies the mostly invisible struggles of everyone whose mind is broken in some serious way.
Multiple personality disorder is no longer considered a serious diagnosis, a fact noted by Angelica Sullivan in the book, but with magical means Powers is able to make it more real than the real world. Plumtree doesn't just have different personalities, she has different people inhabiting her body on a daily basis. Janis tries to keep a bottle of mouthwash handy, because she finds it disturbing that someone else's spit is in her mouth. In this case, that is a totally reasonable thing to do, and the oddly specific nature of this complaint makes me wonder if Powers stumbled on this example in his research for the book.
Janis and the exceptionally ill-fated Sid Cochran meet up with all of the characters from Last Call and Expiration Date to complete the quest for Dionysus. What follows is typical Powers, and I won't explore the plot here, because I think the grand concept of the whole trilogy is more interesting, and also more subtle. The first time I read this book, I found it both strangely disturbing, and a little ho-hum. As Powers' books go, the plot doesn't seem as tightly wound, and the large ensemble cast from the previous two books can be hard to keep track of. That explains the ho-hum feeling.
It is the disturbing part that I only recently figured out. I find the quest to win the favor of the god Dionysus horrifying, because the boons he offers seem to be worse than enduring the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. For example, the pagadebiti, Dionysus' wine of forgiveness and a central feature of both the backstory and the quest, exacts a steep price: you must surrender to Dionysus every memory and emotion you have regarding he person involved. For Sid Cochran, his role in the quest is to offer up his beloved and freshly dead wife Nina [who it turns out was really married to Dionysus using Sid as a proxy] and their unborn child to Dionysus as a peace offering or gesture of goodwill.
This strikes me as very odd, but I didn't realize why until the third time through the book. The key bit in that realization was a story told about St. Margaret Mary Alacoque. St. Margaret started having visions of Christ. In a prudent move, he approached her confessor and told him about them. The confessor, a stolid sort who knew that most reports of visions were just fantasies or hallucinations, asked her to query Christ in her visions and report back to him. St. Margaret dutifully did so, and the confessor was surprised to find his questions had been answered accurately. At this point, he got suspicious, since Catholics take Satanic temptation seriously. He asked St. Margaret to ask Christ what sins he had confessed last week.
St. Margaret reported back: "He told me he did not know. He said he had forgotten." The priest was dumbfounded by this, because he had expected to have his sins thrown back in his face. What he got instead, was mercy. The sacrament of reconciliation, popularly known as confession, only asks for honesty and penitence. The only forgetting that happens is apparently on God's part, as mysterious as that sounds. I used to think that it was a burden to remember all the sins you have been forgiven, but Powers showed me that it is not.
What I think Powers has done with Earthquake Weather is to write a negative theodicy. A complaint often advanced against theism in general, and Christianity in particular, is that a just god could not allow for so much unjust suffering in the world. If God were truly good, and truly all powerful, then it would be simple to alleviate the cries of the poor, for example.
Using myth, Powers has written for us the world that would result from the attentions of a god that is good, after a fashion, but willing to force his intentions onto people to guarantee results. By the end of Earthquake Weather, nearly every character has been found to be the pawn of Dionysus in some fashion. Even Sherman Oaks, the villain of Expiration Date, is in his service. I also realized that Dionysus is so terrible because he is so just. Everyone gets what they deserve. Precisely.
If you've lived in Christendom your whole life, you probably don't expect this. Neil Gaiman's books helped me realize that people playing at paganism in the United States and Europe are almost always just lapsed Christians. These, and the internet atheists, are the quarters from which complaints about God's goodness usually come. As Chesterton noted in The Everlasting Man, they haven't actually managed to get far enough away from Christianity to judge it accurately.
In his way, I think Powers is trying to help.
October 5, 2017
Dreadful. The plot, such that there was, was boring and incomprehensible. The characters were either undeveloped or annoying. The book appeared to be full of literary allusions but they were all lost on me, as I’ve never read Richard II or Troilus and Cressida or A Tale of Two Cities. I struggled through to the end because I hate not finishing books but I think I should have just thrown it in the bin.
May 30, 2018
So, this is the last of a trilogy. When I read the second, I was left wondering what it had to do with the first. This one ties the two together. Decent series overall, though not the best Powers I've read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 83 reviews