The Stress of Her Regard (1989)

Summary: In 1816, on the night before his wedding, young doctor Michael Crawford places his wedding band on the hand of a statue so that he wouldn't lose it in the dark and stormy decorative garden. However, the next morning, the statue - and his ring - are gone. The wedding proceeds anyways, but Michael's relief is short-lived, as during their first night together, his new bride is murdered in a terrifyingly gruesome manner. Suspicion of course immediately falls upon Michael, who flees, and winds up in hiding with a young medical student named Keats, who introduces Michael to the world into which his has inadvertently stumbled. Because the statue was no statue, but rather a lamia, a member of an ancient race of beings that have been called everything from vampires to nephilim, and a creature to which Crawford is now inextricably bound. Interactions with the lamia are not uncommon in 19th century Europe, and as Crawford travels on, he meets several others so afflicted, including the poets Byron and Shelley. But is the benefit of binding oneself to a lamia really worth the terrible cost that it can exact?

Review: When I was looking for my next book to read, I saw this title on my Kindle and thought "Oh, hey, historical fiction and vampires, should be fun, and totally appropriate for an "I-am-not-overfond-of-air-travel-so-I-get-to-read-trashy-books-as-a-reward-when-I'm-on-a-plane" book." Right? Right? Wrong. So very wrong. This book was dense, complicated, and twisty in a way that made it really difficult for me to keep a lot of things straight. It wasn't a bad read, but it was a read that required more brain power and undivided attention than I really had free to give it, and it was also a lot more serious and dense than I was expecting.

A lot of this is because Powers's worldbuilding is really, really complex. I love the fact that he incorporated all kinds of folklore and mythology and history into a single cohesive idea. I also love the fact that he managed to work this story into the real history, into the lives of real people, without (insofar as I know; I am by no means an expert - or even a well-informed amateur - on the period and people involved) altering what's known from the historical record. He manages to pull quotes from the writings (published and personal) of the romantic poets and their contemporaries that support his version of events, and weaves it all together so well that I started to think "What if this really were what happened? What if this is how it works? Could I prove that it wasn't true?" It's rare that a book manages to pull that off, but I absolutely love when one does (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children is another example, although they're otherwise not particularly similar.)

But the problem with all that complexity is that it makes for very confusing reading if you're not going slowly and paying attention, and sometimes even when you are. I spent a lot of the book not entirely clear on the differences between an individual who is born into the "family", vs. those that marry into it, vs. those that are outside but eager to attract a lamia, vs. those that are attracted to the humans who are lamia-touched, etc. Not to mention the extent of lamia powers, what they can and can't do, and what they do or don't do to humans, how they're related to the Graeae, how the Graeae work to influence probility, and so on. Even after having slogged through the entire 400-odd pages, I'm *still* not sure I understand it well enough to give a coherent explanation or summary. I'm sure it all does fit together - nothing in this book gave the impression of being random or ill-thought-out - but the underlying order didn't always come across clearly on the page.

This detail-packed but not always clearly delineated style came across in the pacing as well. There are certainly some very tautly suspenseful and effectively creepy scenes, in particular most of the confrontations with the lamia. The initial scene, where Michael puts the wedding ring on a statue, which then closes its hand when he's not looking, was scary enough that I didn't want to read it after dark... and not just because it reminded me of the Weeping Angels from Doctor Who. (That sure didn't help, though.) There were other scenes that were just as good; the problem was that I found a lot of the interstitial parts much slower going. It may be because I'm not particularly familiar with the romantic poets, or it may just have been the style of the book, but I had a really hard time connecting with any of the characters, which made it difficult to really get invested in the parts of the story where nothing much was happening.

In short, this book took a lot of very interesting ideas and wove them all together in a creative and fascinating way, but the actual execution of the story itself, while perfectly fine on a technical level, just didn't always work for me. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: This would probably be best for people who like their fantasy more on the literary side, both in terms of the density and complexity of the prose, as well as in the sense that it involves actual figures from literary history. ( )

*note to self. Copy from A. ( )

On the plus side, I'm starting to enjoy the Powers thing of taking some known historical characters and events and weaving an outrageous story around the interstices. I used to own a book about writing called "Telling Lies for Fun and Profit," (good book btw), and I think the Tim Powers book about writing would be "Inventing Wacky Conspiracy Theories for Fun and Profit."

In this case, its a mock gothic set in the early 1800's on the premise that for 800 years many of the major European poets got their gift from being victims of an elder race of non human intelligences that are sort of vampires, sort of Melusine snakes, sort of incubus/succubus shape shifting rock monsters. The story centers on the efforts of Shelly, Byron, Keats, various of their associates and a guy named Michael Crawford teaming up to try win free of the creatures.

Lots of this is great fun. So that's the plus. The minus is that I felt like it went on entirely too long and eventually it just wore out its welcome with me. The first three times they were in a pitched battle with monsters trying to devour them, I was right in there rooting for them. By the seventh trip through the same territory I was a little tired of the landscape and starting to think about what might be for lunch.

Still, I think its well worth reading, and there are many reviewers for whom it clearly didn't wear thin. So if it sounds interesting I say check it out and see how your mileage varies. ( )

Gothic novelists inspired (and consumed) by vampiric siblings and muses in 19th century Italy - this should be an absolute winner, but I found the pacing off, the characterisation thin, and the dialogue jarring, resulting in a real problem with suspending my disbelief. I wanted to like it a lot more than I actually did. ( )

I'm finding this a very difficult book to review and rate. With a premise that has the 19th century poets Byron, Shelley and Keats battling ancient vampire/succubus creatures, I should have loved it, but I found it equal parts interesting and unsatisfying. There are certainly some magnificently creepy and exciting sections, and the book as a whole is a very clever weaving together of historical facts, the works of the poets and their personal correspondence, folklore and mythology (both Biblical and Classical), and early 19th-century scientific knowledge and technology into a cohesive whole. However, at the same time it felt *extremely* anachronistic, particularly in terms of dialogue, and I found that very jarring (I half-expected Byron to start saying "okay" or "whatever"). On top of that, the characterisations frequently fell flat, and it spent little time on the characters I found most interesting (e.g. Josephine, Mary Shelley, John Keats). ( )