The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
December 8th 2006 08:25
The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers
The Stress of Her Regard is the Tim Powers Goddess novel. I do not know if Powers has explicitly followed the Graves single poetic theme but here the White Goddess is a vampire who can be vanquished through appurtenances of Catholic Church. The vampire forms a family called nephelim who include the "Goddesses" all the way upto the Nine Muses, who break into infants at certain times of Hallowe'en and use them as hosts. For the host, the vampire provides out of the world sexual experiences and poetic inspiration. They count as her family but she is ruthless with anyone else.
The novel tracks one Michael Crawford who is a gynaecologist and is about to get married. On a drunken bout the night before his marriage, he mistakenly slips a ring on the finger of statue and gets wedded into the family of the nephelim. The next morning his bride is slashed to pieces and he quickly turns into a fugitive.
Michael's career as a runaway is dovetailed with the lives of Romantic poets: Byron, Shelly and Keats. They are all also in various stages of bondage to the nephelim and Powers uses their poems throughout the novel rather cunningly to add to his gothic vampire adventure.
Coming after The Anubis Gates, the novel is a disappointment. It's plot is more of a escape than a chase and escapes do not grip your attention if what you are escaping from is not a formidable enemy. The vampire here lacks personality and that makes it harder to get involved in the conflict. There are some knockdown scenes full of violence though but Powers' writing strangely lacks erotic charge even when he describes some really decadent acts. All in all, its a graphic but rather a static counterthrust to those matriarchal fantasies.
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