Rating: 
Summary: Haunting, creepy, and addictive
Review: I thought I was sick unto death of vampire novels until I read this one. _The Stress of Her Regard_ reminds me of Anne Rice at her best, some years ago, except with more action and less description of the carpeting. The story centers around the nephelim, Lilith's brood. Seductive, serpentine, and deadly, they are succubi and vampires, draining blood and vitality from their hosts even as they inspire them to creativity. One of these beings attaches itself to Byron and Shelley's circle of expatriate poets, and the drama begins. We see this through the eyes of gynecologist Michael Crawford, who gets drunk and puts his wedding ring on a statue's hand at the bachelor party--and finds his wife murdered the morning after the wedding, in a scene reminiscent, probably intentionally, of Dr. Frankenstein's wedding night. Suspected of the murder, he flees to the Continent, where he becomes Byron's personal doctor. Traveling with the controversial lord, he will become entangled with poets, wannabe poets, fetishists who *want* to be vampire victims, and the mentally ill sister of his dead wife, who wants to see him dead. Along the way, he learns more about the creature to whom he is "married", and tries to break his ties to it, as mysterious deaths begin to occur. This is a creepy and atmospheric novel that I could not put down. I read at night until I couldn't stay awake any longer, then got up and read in the morning. This is an enthralling novel of ancient evil, troubled love, birth, and death, which will stay with you.
Rating:
Summary: Haunting, creepy, and addictive
Review: I thought I was sick unto death of vampire novels until I read this one. _The Stress of Her Regard_ reminds me of Anne Rice at her best, some years ago, except with more action and less description of the carpeting. The story centers around the nephelim, Lilith's brood. Seductive, serpentine, and deadly, they are succubi and vampires, draining blood and vitality from their hosts even as they inspire them to creativity. One of these beings attaches itself to Byron and Shelley's circle of expatriate poets, and the drama begins. We see this through the eyes of gynecologist Michael Crawford, who gets drunk and puts his wedding ring on a statue's hand at the bachelor party--and finds his wife murdered the morning after the wedding, in a scene reminiscent, probably intentionally, of Dr. Frankenstein's wedding night. Suspected of the murder, he flees to the Continent, where he becomes Byron's personal doctor. Traveling with the controversial lord, he will become entangled with poets, wannabe poets, fetishists who *want* to be vampire victims, and the mentally ill sister of his dead wife, who wants to see him dead. Along the way, he learns more about the creature to whom he is "married", and tries to break his ties to it, as mysterious deaths begin to occur. This is a creepy and atmospheric novel that I could not put down. I read at night until I couldn't stay awake any longer, then got up and read in the morning. This is an enthralling novel of ancient evil, troubled love, birth, and death, which will stay with you.
Rating: 
Summary: A spiralling descent into the insanity of creative genius
Review: If you have yet to discover Powers, what a treat awaits you! For those of you who have read his earlier work, such as The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides, I know I'll be preaching to the converted when I say that Powers is one of the most exciting authors writing fantasy today. He is one of the progenitors of the "gonzo" fantasy, a style in which the author uses actual history for the majority of the plot, but inserts fantastic elements that explain actions left mysterious by time and which will provide the details of the story. K.W. Jeter and James P. Blaylock, friends of Powers', have also written stories in this style, and Bruce Sterling and William Gibson are working on one called The Difference Engine. But gonzo fantasy is Powers' ballgame, and he's still batting 1.000. The Stress of Her Regard is set in the time of those three happy-go-lucky but yet melancholy poets, the Romantics. No, not the rock group, but Lord Byron, Percy Shelly, and John Keats. Powers has once again picked his time period and historical people well--there are few people as full of life and mystery as these three poets. Byron, Shelly and Keats were the original Beat writers, travelling the world and putting what they saw into their fiction and poetry long before Jack Keroauc. The main character isn't a poet, though, but a doctor named Michael Crawford. Having already suffered the death of his first wife and his younger brother, the book opens with Crawford's marriage to his second wife and her brutal death beside him in bed on their first night as man and wife. Blamed for his wife's death, and laboring under the absence of his own memory of that night, Crawford flees into hiding. But Crawford is hunted, not only with guilt for the deaths of those close to him, but also by strangely erotic dreams, and hounded by the sister of his second wife. His escape from both of these are interlocked with the poetry and lives of the Romantics. You mention fantasy to some people, and they have a hard time not relating it with Tolkien or Dungeons & Dragons. Powers' fiction isn't one style alone. The Stress of Her Regard is a perfect example of this. Not only does it predispose some knowledge of the work of the three poets, but it also has horrific undertones that threaten to explode into the forefront a la Stephen King. Powers' previous novels have also played fast and loose with historical characters, but those characters have always remained in the background, as if Powers was wary that the "real" characters would destroy the fabric of his half-real fantasy world. In The Stress of Her Regard, though, Powers bravely tackles using the historical characters to become major forces of the storyline. In fact, the intriguing ambiguous yet always exciting Byron steals the book from Crawford, who seems to be a rudderless boat on a swift moving river. And although Byron falls victim to the lamias, his struggle and fall are the stuff that climaxes are built of, rather than Crawford's selfless struggle to rescue his wife's sister. Not as pyrotechnic as The Anubis Gates, nor as perverse as Dinner at Deviant's Palace, nor as playful as On Stranger Tides, what distinguishes The Stress of Her Regard is the consistent tone of the novel--a spiralling descent into the insanity of creative genius, and the redemption of love.
Rating: 
Summary: Truly Bizarre and Unusual
Review: In my 41+ years of reading, I will admit that there are few times that an author has truly caught me off guard and offered me a genuinely surprising book. Tim Power's The Sress of Her Regard is tuly exceptional--it is an alternative "biography" of the Romantic poets, a scary and sometimes gory vampire story, a distinctly odd and profoundly affecting love story, and a literary tour de force. It was housed with science fiction in my local library, but I think this does it an injustice (with no offence meant to those who love science fiction). It transcends a great many boundaries. It was lyrical, creepy, thought-provoking, and has made me re-read and re-think Keat, Byron, and Shelley. I wish it was still in print. It is a book I would love to own and share with others. (I will warn you that it is often not easy to read and not for the young or squeamish amongst us.)
Rating:
Summary: Truly Bizarre and Unusual
Review: In my 41+ years of reading, I will admit that there are few times that an author has truly caught me off guard and offered me a genuinely surprising book. Tim Power's The Sress of Her Regard is tuly exceptional--it is an alternative "biography" of the Romantic poets, a scary and sometimes gory vampire story, a distinctly odd and profoundly affecting love story, and a literary tour de force. It was housed with science fiction in my local library, but I think this does it an injustice (with no offence meant to those who love science fiction). It transcends a great many boundaries. It was lyrical, creepy, thought-provoking, and has made me re-read and re-think Keat, Byron, and Shelley. I wish it was still in print. It is a book I would love to own and share with others. (I will warn you that it is often not easy to read and not for the young or squeamish amongst us.)
Rating:
Summary: STRESS--Advanced course in Tim Powers
Review: It is a little known fact that Tim Powers actually appears as a character in Philip K Dick's masterwork VALIS. In THE STRESS OF HER REGARDS, Powers assumes the role left by Dick as no less than the Bob Dylan of Science Fiction. Tim's everyman is led by the unholy marriage of silicon and live blood (what can this be an allegory to?) out of context of normal Victorian England into a maelstrom of Great Romantic poets, old testament vampires, horror, heroism and finally a poetic antinode that finishes like a fine wine or a note from a Stradavarius. Resonance from this novel will haunt you for years. One warning:if you are squeamish in the scene in the Alps, keep reading! All will be revealed.
Rating:
Summary: Fantasy at it's finest
Review: No matter what you have to do to read this book you MUST DO IT. This is an amazing story. I read alot of fantasy ( King's "Dark Tower series, A Song of Fire and Ice, The Alvin Maker series and so on... So I don't read many single titles unless they've been written by Tim Powers and this is the best peice of fantasy I've ever read.
Rating:
Summary: At last: justification for 6 years of college
Review: One of the most intriguing uses of the vampyre legends to grace the heavily-gothed (that's an adjective BTW) bookshelves. For those of us who were never satisfyingly blown away by Rice's depictions of charismatic bloodsuckers, Powers offers us a delicious mythology (yum, yum). Then, he weaves the mythology through the realm of the Romantic Poets. See? I knew there was a reason for memorizing exquisite odes and suffering (through? with?) self-tortured heroes such as Byron. Why? So I can unravel all the cool allusions throughout the book (Oh, so that's where Byron got the idea for "Manfred"...) For the groundlings who haven't delved into Norton's Anthologies the better half of their adult lives, you don't have to "get" all said allusions to enjoy the novel, but for the poor schmu--er, diligent scholars who still harbor a passion for Shelley & Co. `The Stress of her Regard' will send you (us) scrambling for those well-highlighted sections of colleg! e texts. I fell in love all over again. Great fun. Stands up to the multiple-reading test (dig it each time).
Rating:
Summary: Mesmerizing
Review: This book blows me away. Tim Powers is a master at taking real or historical fact and twisting it just enough (but not too much) so convincingly, that I almost accept that his version of events is the true story. That this is the true story that was too disturbing or fantastical to be told in text books. I'm not going into plot cuz you can read that elsewhere, but the scope of Powers imagination is a dazzling and breathetaking thing to behold. When I finished reading the last page, I had that weird feeling you get when you have fallen and smacked your head pretty hard..but not enough to fall unconscious, where the world is suddenly still and calm and waiting for your next move. I can't recommend this book more, though I don't think everyone will experience it in the same way I have.
Rating:
Summary: Not Powers's best, but still exceptional
Review: This one is a re-read and I remember now why I enjoyed the book so much the first time -- and why I was also somewhat frustrated by it. It's a fat thing (480 pages) but it sometimes seems much longer. Not because it's dull -- it's *never* dull -- but because the prose and the plot are so dense. Powers obviously has a thing for the circle of poets that included Byron, Shelley, and Keats. They're all here, along with Mary Godwin Shelley and many of the historical hangers-on, but Powers's interpretation of their lives and actions is, as always, far different from what you what expect. It's the nephelim, the vampires, that made Shelley the bizarre figure that he was, and that made Keats such a bleak person, and that made Byron so waspish. But it's also why they were such fervent poets. Then there's Michael Crawford, ex-ship's surgeon, pioneering gynecologist, and new husband. Crawford doesn't know it when the book opens, but he's about to lose a finger as well as another wife and he's about to spend the next six years almost constantly on the run. Whether he's hauling François Villon about in a little red wagon, or trying to answer the Sphinx's riddle on an Alpen mountaintop, or battling the 800-year-old head of the Habsburgs in Venice, he's about to enter a dispairing, exhausting, and very traumatic period of his life. Fascinating for the reader, too, because Powers puts you right into the period and the company of Byron et al. The frustrating part? The first two-thirds of the story are irritatingly episodic, almost as if they had been written originally as a serial and then stitched together (they weren't), and the characters tend to refer back explicitly to earlier events as if you might have forgotten them (you won't). But make sure you're holed up somewhere that you can lose yourself in the last 150 pages undisturbed, because you won't want to quit without finishing them.
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