The stress of her regard

Just finished reading The Stress of her Regard, by Tim Powers. I've got to say I do really enjoy reading Tim Powers - I've got to get my hands on the rest of them some time (I've read Declare, The Anubis Gates, Drawing of the Dark, and On Stranger Tides). His stuff isn't like anything else out there (that I've read, anyway) - it's pseudo-historical fiction, based around real characters and events, and he then comes up with the secret occult secrets that explain it all. There's a depth to the mythologies and occult lore in his books that is just astonishing, and he comes at the ideas from a completely different angle than anyone else.

Stress is a vampire novel, with Byron, Shelley, and Keats. It tells the story of the last years of Shelley's life through the eyes of Michael Crawford, an English doctor who is haunted by a strange demon/vampire/lamia creature. It was a riveting read, and the mythology that Powers builds is rich and believable. It's certainly one of his better books, and it's another of his that will haunt my thoughts of mythology and religion. Reading Shelley's wikipedia entry is like getting a recap of the story of the book, minus the bits the book states didn't make it into the public record.

Summary: a damn good read. Go out and read all of Tim Powers' stuff, especially the later novels, where he's worked out how to end a story without an anticlimax.