Subject: Last Call by Tim Powers

From: [email-masked] (Dana Goldblatt)
Date: 19 May 92 17:24:50 GMT

*         %A   Powers, Tim, 1952-
          %C   New York
*         %D   1992
*         %G   ISBN # 0-688-10732-X
*         %I   William Morrow and Company, Inc.
          %O   $23.00
          %P   479 pp.
*         %T   Last Call

                LAST CALL by Tim Powers
             review by Dana Goldblatt

Last Call is a wild, fast-paced novel in a way, but rather than being
a rollercoaster type of novel, that straps you in and takes you for a ride, 
this one is appropriately a poker game type of novel, in which a lot of the 
action takes place inside your head as opposed to strictly on the pages.

What is on the pages is, if you have read much of Powers (I've read all 
his books except On Stranger Tides), what you would expect of this 
writer.  The main and most obvious theme is one he also used in The
Drawing of the Dark: the mystical kingship:
     "The East Coast gangster lords had seemed to sense the kind of
kingship that nobody had yet taken in the United States.  Joseph
Doto had assumed the name Joe Adonis...." (p. 21)
"...his status as the modern avatar of Dionysus and Tammuz and Attis
and Osiris and the Fisher King and every other god and king who died
in the winter and was reborn in the spring..." (p. 25)

But it is in expounding the *differences* between this "kingship" now,
and the way it originally was, where the book speaks to a modern
audience:
     " 'He's a--a legend, you know?' ... 'And you say he's green?' .... 
'*No*.  He *used* to be green, and just a *big* man, not fat, but that
version stopped applying sometime.  ... Now he's not the Green Knight
that Gawain met anymore--because the water's sick and the land's
barren, like in Second Kings--now he's real fat, and he's generally
black or gray or even metallic."(p. 79)

(I am taking all my quotes from the start of the book, which is mostly
expository anyway, so that I will not give out spoilers.)

There is also a "character" who is something like the succubus-like
creatures in The Stress of her Regard.

The mythology behind the action is mentioned often, but it is 
never actually quite spelled out, which I think is a benefit in the 
case of this book.  Leaving a few loose ends to make you think is 
one of the reasons this book is so interesting.

In another way, to make another comparison, Last Call is like Dan 
Simmons's Hyperion story.  In a less stylized (or less obviously stylized,
anyhow) way, Powers has many characters, each for his or her own
reason, each with his or her own story, making a pilgrimage to a 
fabled place (in this case, Las Vegas) to confront an evil being and
a doom that has awaited them (and which most of them were aware
of).  Again like Simmons, Powers never actually comes out and tells
the reader what the story is *about*, although he drops some fairly
clear hints.

Speaking of those hints, some of them work very well if you are 
watching out for them, and without spoilers I will point out some spots
to watch:  the stuff about the nuclear bomb tests in the Nevada desert,
and the stuff about the Viet Nam war.   

Unfortunately, the parts that are supposed to be from the feminine point
of view are not done so well, to the extent that I was mostly unable to 
determine their significance.  I will leave that to others, if you care to
help enlighten me?  They advanced the plot ok, but otherwise seemed
to be filler material.  I am not saying that the female characters are
bad, they are fairly varied and interesting.  But they seem to be better
drawn from the outside than the inside.

Altogether, I liked this book very much and would recommend it.  If you
liked previous books by Tim Powers, you will probably like this one.
Otherwise, you had best judge not just by my description, but by
your own tastes.  I'd guess that quite a few people will really love this
book, although not everyone.  A lot of people will find it just too unclear
and too much work, and others will no doubt find it just the opposite:
somewhat simplifying of complex things.  I got a lot out of this book and
will probably read it again, maybe tomorrow :-)

-dana