I have been a Tim Powers fan ever since 1990, my freshman year at college, when my friend's roommate loaned me his copy of The Anubis Gates. Sadly I find myself liking Powers' more recent novels less and less, with each novel being more dispiriting than the one before.

Three Days to Never is his most recent novel, and it is the one which I like the least. It seems difficult to believe that it comes from the same author who brought us The Anubis Gates. There isn't even any fencing in it. And I ask you, what kind of Tim Powers novel has no fencing in it? Not even a little.

What it does have is drinking, in spades. Alcoholism (and its aftereffects) has long been a thread drawn through Powers' books, but in Three Days to Never it finds its fullest expression. Something which was once portrayed as a terrifying black hole to be escaped from with your life (if at all) is here treated more like a sad, inevitable fate. Read more about Tim Powers, "Three Days to Never"