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From: ecl@ahutb.UUCP (e.c.leeper)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers,net.books
Subject: DINNER AT DEVIANT'S PALACE
Message-ID: <666@ahutb.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 15-Apr-85 11:35:02 EST
Article-I.D.: ahutb.666
Posted: Mon Apr 15 11:35:02 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 16-Apr-85 00:53:56 EST
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                  DINNER AT DEVIANT'S PALACE by Tim Powers
                             Ace, 1985, $2.95.
                     A book review by Evelyn C. Leeper

     Powers's first book (THE ANUBIS GATES) was so remarkable that this
novel was almost certainly doomed to suffer by comparison.  Perhaps it's
unfair to expect the complexity that one found in THE ANUBIS GATES in
everything Powers writes, but this does disappoint the reader somewhat in
that regard.  This is not to say that this is a bad book--it isn't--but it
many ways, it's an ordinary book.

     Set in post-holocaust Los Angeles and environs, the story is a strange
combination of religious cults and drug dealers, slavery and strange
perversions (no, don't run right out and buy it--he's not that graphic about
them!).  Greg Rivas is a musician who rescues people from Norton Jaybush's
religious cult, or rather, who did until he decided it was too dangerous.
Now he's hired to rescue one more person--his old girlfriend.

     The plot is fairly straight-forward, the typical de-programming story
that has become popular of late (usually with the Moonies as the cult).  The
post-holocaust culture seems poorly realized, and that may be the main
problem.  In THE ANUBIS GATES, Powers drew the England of the 1800's very
well--he knew his history, he got the ambiance right, he had lots of
interesting characters.  He laid a lot of other cultures on top--Egyptian,
Gypsie, and others--and he did well with those also.  But here he has a sort
of spaced-out musical culture, a spaced-out religious cult culture, and not
much else to hold it together.  How people live and work and survive in Los
Angeles is not made clear.  And where the resolution of THE ANUBIS GATES was
very well tied together, the resolution of DINNER AT DEVIANT'S PALACE seems
very pasted on.  In THE ANUBIS GATES, he neatly drops the last piece of the
massive jigsaw into place; in DINNER AT DEVIANT'S PALACE, he takes a piece,
hacks at it to fit, and whacks it in with a sledge-hammer.

     I realize all this sounds very negative.  The book is not that bad, but
it's not that good either.  Read his first novel instead, and hope for a
better one for his third.

					Evelyn C. Leeper
For now, I am				...ihnp4!ahutb!ecl
But, on May 1, I become			...ihnp4!mtgzz!ecl