I think Tim Powers must have been spending a lot of time with K.W. Jeter when he wrote this.

Nutty dystopian trippy icky nonsense fun with just enough pretentiousness to seem like it's about something. ( )

Gregorio Rivas se tenía por un hombre duro. Gozaba de merecida fama como uno de los mejores redentores que habían sobrevivido a su oficio: la recuperación (o rapto) de conversos del siniestro culto religioso que lideraba Norton Jaybush. Ahora, una vez más, se disponía a poner en peligro su vida infiltrándose en los dominios del culto, pero con apuestas algo superiores a lo habitual: el precio exigido para rescatar a la única mujer que había amado consistía en varios miles de botellas (quintos) de coñac, la moneda de cambio oficial después de la guerra nuclear.

Dinner at Deviant’s Palace is a bit unusual for a Tim Powers’ book, a post-apocalyptic adventure rather than a secret history. In my own mind, it has been overshadowed a bit by The Anubis Gates, possibly Powers’ most famous novel, released two years earlier. Yet, Gregorio Rivas’ quest to rescue his long-lost love from the cult of the Jaybirds is solid, with very classic Powers themes like the attraction of sin and the hazards of adventuring. I think this one may be a bit underappreciated, so let’s take a closer look.

Like Jerry Pournelle, Powers has set a number of his books in and around Los Angeles. I happen to be pretty familiar with LA, but I like this kind of thing even when it is not an area I’m familiar with. But since this is a post-apocalyptic LA, Powers gets to have some fun with the location. My personal favorite is the Ellay-Ex Deep, the circular bay that is reputed to glow in the center, and from whence radioactive delights are fished up to be served in the titular palace.

Ellay itself is what passes for a bastion of civilization, a center of trade in a mostly agricultural landscape. Gregorio has a pretty comfortable life there, playing his violin-like pelican in a bar, drinking, whoring, and enjoying the dissipations of being a post-apocalyptic rock star. At least until a baldy sport shows up at Spinks and offers him a ridiculous amount of money to go on one last redemption.

I hadn’t been aware of the use of the term “sport” in a genetic sense until I read Dinner at Deviant’s Palace. I mostly thought of the word “sport” as a upper-crusty way of referring to a friend, like in The Great Gatsby. Greg uses the term as an insult when he rejects the bald man’s offer, nearly getting himself into a duel over it. I enjoy the word play that Powers engages in here, as I suspect most native English readers would not think he was calling the man a mutant to his face. There is a lot of that in this book, and I enjoyed it immensely.

Unlike The Drawing of the Dark, I didn’t often find Dinner at Deviant’s Palace laugh out loud funny. The themes of the book are typical for Powers, but the voice is very different. It is often dry and witty, but also dark, with touches of horror. I appreciate this difference, as Greg is a very different man than Brian Duffy. Brian is a charming old reprobate; Greg is just kind of an asshole. It is possible that this book is a less popular one just because of Greg’s personality, which is distinctly unlovely.

Greg does share some traits with Brian: he’s left-handed, deft with a blade, and more than a bit of a drunkard. That latter item is in itself a common theme of Powers works. Powers himself has said that he had to give up drinking in the mid 1990s, which would have been about ten years later than he wrote this book. Not only Brian Duffy and Greg Rivas, but Scott Crane and other Powers protagonists have tended to drink to excess. For all of these characters, it fits well. Rock stars, old soldiers, and men dealing with grief often turn to drink. However, another profession that tends to be tipplers are authors, and I’ve often felt that Powers was writing from personal experience here.

Yet, despite Greg’s flaws, he is not just a protagonist, but a hero. A genuine white hat. For all his selfishness and vanity, Greg does eventually agree to try and redeem the daughter of the richest man in Ellay [although not without attempting to drive a very hard bargain first]. Because Greg cannot abandon Urania to the tender mercies of the Jaybirds. He knows what they are like, because he was one.

Greg was the best redeemer in Ellay because he knew Norton Jaybush and his followers, the Jaybirds, well enough to infiltrate the group and spirit away new recruits before their minds were ruined. In a providential twist, Greg’s personality equips him well for this role [and his drinking and talent for music come in handy too]. However, Greg is retired from redeeming for a reason: adventuring is a young man’s game.

Greg Rivas isn’t old by any stretch, but I do appreciate Powers’ lively sense of what it means to age. Greg’s knowledge is just as relevant as ever, but when success or failure depends upon the quickness of your knife and how long you can go without sleep, even getting into your thirties is going to lower your odds.

That Greg agrees to do this at all, given that he knows he has a good chance of failure, is why I see Greg as a hero rather than an anti-hero. Little does he realize the price he will pay. In addition to Powers take on getting old, it is rare for a Powers protagonist to make to the end of a book with all of their bits intact. And yet, for all the physical peril that Greg faces, dying is far from the worst thing that could happen to him.

Greg’s quest is both enabled and undermined by his incipient dissolution, and his fate hinges on: who is Gregorio Rivas? Come along on an adventure and find out. ( )

This is really a book I'm not sure I like. I read it a long time ago, and it left an unfavorable impression, but I couldn't recall any of the details.

On a reread - I found it considerable different than what I thought it originally was. The book is well done. We have a post-apocalyptic California west coast. What happened is never mentioned, nor does it matter. Our protagonist, Greg Rivas is retired from a life of retrieving loved ones from an especially devious cult. When Greg's first love joins the cult, he does one last run to save her.

On the whole - this book is weird. Like twisted weird. Its not a bad thing, but it is relentless. From the Jaybird cult, to who Deviant is. Its a completely weird book, and there isn't much that is positive in it. Luckily, its short, covers some very interesting ground, and its logically consistent.

As stated originally, its a book I'm not sure I like, but the book is intriguing. ( )

Pretty good tale, this, not one of Powers's best, but a fun read regardless. I was interested to see how Powers would handle what was ostensibly a science fiction story, since he mostly sets his stuff in existing cultures and time periods, albeit warped versions of such. I'm glad to say he pulls it off pretty well. It's clear Powers put a lot of thought into his setting, a post apocalyptic LA and its surrounding environs. Things feel run down but still serviceable. Beer and liquor are the new currency. People with gold teeth are used as mediums due to "voices" they are said to hear. A new cult called the Jaybirds has sprung up in the ruins, seizing people off the streets and turning them into mindless zealots. In response a thriving trade in "redeeming" has appeared, basically freeing the captive before they are wholly taken under the influence of the cultists.

The main protagonist, Gregorio Rivas, is a former redeemer turned musician, whiling his hours away playing to packed out crowds while slowly drinking himself into a stupor. Pretty typical Powers's anti-hero really, though a good bit younger and fresher than Brian Duffy and the like. Needless to say, his former life catches up to him in the form of an old enemy whose daughter, an old flame of Rivas's, has been captured. Much of the rest of the book follows his several abortive attempts to get the man's daughter back (and perhaps pick up from where things left off) during which time he learns the truth about the Jaybirds and its sinister leader, Norton Jaybush.

The story cracks along at a fair old pace, and while it lacks a little of the staggering inventiveness of his better known works, it never quite loses the plot either (something that Powers has been guilty of in the past). Good, fun work. Worth seeking out. ( )