James P. Blaylock

[FizbansTalking_Hat]

Have you heard of him. He is one of my favorite authors to read. He writes some steampunk and urban fantasy.

His greatest books in my opinion are The Last Coin, & The Paper Grail

The Last Coin -

In Blaylock's contemporary fantasy, the fate of the world falls into the hands of a daydreaming eccentric named Andrew Vanbergen. This quick-tempered Californian is muddling through the conversion of his rambling home into an inn and cafe when he unwittingly becomes one of the Caretakers who have kept the world safe for nearly two millennia. The danger is that someone like Andrew's mysterious guest Jules Pennyman will gather together Judas Iscariot's original 30 pieces of silver, thereby summoning up an apocalyptic magic. Against a lyric vision of the Southern California coast, cosmic conspiracy theories bump heads in a gleeful farce to produce another strange and wonderful book from the idiosyncratic author of Homunculus and Land of Dreams.

If you're looking for someone new and a fun read, give it a try if you like the above and it interests you, cheers. I own about 10 or so of his books in first editoin hardbound, I think he's a brilliant writer, cheers.

[danlo]

AHHH! Nobody knows how looong my 2B Read List is! Thanks for the heads up though-will keep in mind...

[dANdeLION]

Tell me about it, Danlo. My unread Asimov list alone is still over 300 books.....the only author I can claim to have completely read is SRD, but I haven't even seen a Reed Stephens book yet, so even that is a lie.

[Roland of Gilead]

This is one of those authors who is almost universally liked, but I didn't much care for the one novel I read of his, The Last Coin.

I realize that Fiz and most everyone else disagrees with me. I think Blaylock is sort of Tim Powers-lite. He's similar, but doesn't tackle his concepts in as clever and imaginative ways as Powers does. Blaylock is too whimsical for me.

All through The Last Coin, I kept thinking how Powers could have taken this same basic plot, an intriguing idea indeed, and written a better novel from it. I thought the ending to The Last Coin was just downright silly.