Expiration Date, by Tim Powers - Book Review
October 19th, 2008 by Robert
Sometimes I get the feeling that there are so many crazy, whacked out, brilliant ideas running around in Tim Powers’ head that perhaps his greatest challenge when writing a novel is to keep in control of the outflow. Let the tap out too fast and everything would spill out onto the page willy nilly, and the task of tying all these threads together would be impossible. The multitude of plot strands in Expiration Date, each of which entails at least one weird and funky idea of its own, must have made this a particularly difficult project to keep the lid on.
The fourth volume of Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles is quite a departure from the last instalment. Unlike The Queen of the Damned, which became an aimless mass of multiple plot strands and apocalyptic excess, The Tale of the Body Thief re-establishes a sense of intimacy with the series’ most interesting character, and its natural star, Lestat de Lioncourt. 
How can I convey in a few pithy paragraphs the wonder, the fascination, the emotional turmoil, the sheer artistry to be found within the covers of this truly amazing novel? Perdido Street Station is a masterpiece – pure and simple. 
Remind me never to go to the North Pole. If the conditions that Dan Simmons describes so meticulously in his latest novel are in any way accurate, it really doesn’t sound like a pleasant place to visit. Extreme cold, hazardous ice floes, frostbite, starvation, scurvy, mutiny, cannibalism: as if that wasn’t enough for these poor sailors to go through, Dan Simmons decides to throw an enormous ice monster into the mix to pick them off one by one. 
I knew Mieville was a great writer, but little did I know on picking up this volume of short stories for a casual read while enduring some economy-class air hell that I was about to embark on an almost religious experience.