Medusa's web

Locations
Call Number: Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Powers, Tim, Fantasy / Powers, Tim
On Shelf At: Pittsfield Branch

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Pittsfield Adult Books 4-week checkout	Adult Book / Fiction / Fantasy / Powers, Tim	4-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fantasy / Powers, Tim	4-week checkout	Due 05-08-2024

"From the award-winning author of Hide Me Among the Graves, Last Call, Declare, and Three Days to Never, a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family.In the wake of their Aunt Amity's suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline's return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted "House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills" that is a conduit for the supernatural.Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time--to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient "spiders" which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years--an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat's spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family's past and finally free them. or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?"-- Provided by publisher.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Library Journal Review
Booklist Review
Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

While it did become hard to put down toward the end, it's not Powers' best work. submitted by eknapp on April 28, 2016, 3:59pm A deteriorating, creepy old Hollywood mansion full of secrets. An old Hollywood family reunited due to the matriarch's dramatic suicide. A magical drug-like addiction that allows users to trade or share bodies, for a price. A loser brother and his even more losery sister are dropped into this and must solve the mysteries of their aunt's identity, their parents' disappearance, and a long lost film sought by multiple nefarious parties.

I liked his odd characters: he pits a doofy brother and doofier sister against their cousins, a smiling near-quadriplegic and a spiteful harridan. No likely heroes here. And his mystical stuff is fascinating in its potential. At least initially.

But the author loses all control of his supernatural elements. It commences well enough...people who look at certain eight-limbed patterns on paper leap into one another's bodies for brief periods, allowing for a sort of time travel and existence-overlap. But Powers starts tacking on other, badly contrived, effects. Most people suffer mounting health problems from looking at "spiders". But some get a vampiric result instead, allowing them to stay young indefinitely. Suddenly possession gets tossed into the mix. And random but narratively convenient spiderless time travel, out of nowhere.

Also, I could have down without the cinematic action-packed climax. Powers should have stuck with the cerebral stuff.








POTENTIAL SPOILER BELOW

I loved the prophetic references to The Fall of the House of Usher.