A review by drtlovesbooks
The Bible Repairman and Other Stories by Tim Powers
3.0
What it's about: This anthology features an array of genres united by the unusual worlds in which they take place.
"The Bible Repairman" features a world in which the supernatural and psychics are real and under constant bombardment by the thoughts of those around them; the only way they can find peace is by ingesting someone else's broken soul. But the more of your soul you give away, the less life you have. The protagonist finds himself caught in a difficult situation.
"A Soul in a Bottle" is a modern ghost story, a romance, and a time travel story all rolled into one.
"The Hour of Babel" starts with a man revisiting the pizza joint where he used to work before "the incident". But it turns out the incident was much more than he ever realized.
In "Parallel Lines", a woman's dead twin is communicating with her from beyond the grave. Except it's not the protagonist she meant to communicate with...
"A Journey of Only Two Paces" sends the protagonist on a strange lunch meeting to discuss the handling of his former best friend's will. As the day unfolds, the protagonist comes to see that perhaps it wasn't his friend who actually died.
I skipped the final story, "A Time to Cast Away Stones" - after a few pages, it wasn't doing much for me, and there are too many good books in the world to spend time on mediocre ones (especially after reading the previous short pieces, which were quite good).
What I thought: These stories featured lots of twists and turns that I didn't see coming. There was some quality here that I hadn't expected. This was my second time picking this book up from the library, and I must never have cracked it open the last time, because I was expecting something completely and totally different than what was actually happening here.
Why I rated it like I did: I found all of these stories compelling in one way or another, though I wouldn't say I enjoyed all of them necessarily. There are definitely some good pieces here - "A Soul in a Bottle" and "Parallel Lines" were my favorites. Oddly, they seemed to share a little bit of DNA. The other stories featured interesting concepts, but didn't grab me.
"The Bible Repairman" features a world in which the supernatural and psychics are real and under constant bombardment by the thoughts of those around them; the only way they can find peace is by ingesting someone else's broken soul. But the more of your soul you give away, the less life you have. The protagonist finds himself caught in a difficult situation.
"A Soul in a Bottle" is a modern ghost story, a romance, and a time travel story all rolled into one.
"The Hour of Babel" starts with a man revisiting the pizza joint where he used to work before "the incident". But it turns out the incident was much more than he ever realized.
In "Parallel Lines", a woman's dead twin is communicating with her from beyond the grave. Except it's not the protagonist she meant to communicate with...
"A Journey of Only Two Paces" sends the protagonist on a strange lunch meeting to discuss the handling of his former best friend's will. As the day unfolds, the protagonist comes to see that perhaps it wasn't his friend who actually died.
I skipped the final story, "A Time to Cast Away Stones" - after a few pages, it wasn't doing much for me, and there are too many good books in the world to spend time on mediocre ones (especially after reading the previous short pieces, which were quite good).
What I thought: These stories featured lots of twists and turns that I didn't see coming. There was some quality here that I hadn't expected. This was my second time picking this book up from the library, and I must never have cracked it open the last time, because I was expecting something completely and totally different than what was actually happening here.
Why I rated it like I did: I found all of these stories compelling in one way or another, though I wouldn't say I enjoyed all of them necessarily. There are definitely some good pieces here - "A Soul in a Bottle" and "Parallel Lines" were my favorites. Oddly, they seemed to share a little bit of DNA. The other stories featured interesting concepts, but didn't grab me.