Expiration Date
Tim Powers
Tor, 1996
Trade Hardcover
381 pages

Here is a perfect example of why I call these writings of mine “opinions” and not “reviews.” Awhile back I read Powers’ Three Days to Never and gave it a fairly harsh assessment, but it was undeserved. I was reading it with expectations of another rip-roaring adventure like his The Anubis Gates. My own expectations clouded my judgment and resulted in a subjective and unfair opinion. A reviewer must be—if nothing else—objective. A work must be analyzed autonomously. Well, maybe I can remedy my faux pas here. Expiration Date is more like Three Days to Never than The Anubis Gates. It’s deeply researched, methodical, and developed to the point that one might stand back and say, “Is it over-developed?” Powers writes in layers, and they are deep. A shallow observation would result in something very similar to my previous opinion of Three Days to Never. But taken individually, these books are really cool. I thoroughly enjoyed the depth in Expiration Date; of course, I knew not to have expectations. I wish I’d read Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass first, though. These two books are referred to often; indeed, every chapter—over forty of them—begins with a quotation from one of these two Lewis Carroll books. The characters are outstanding in Powers’ novel, many-layered and believable. If anything marred this novel for me it would only be the way in which ghosts are “used” by some people; it just seems kind of silly to me—too much of a stretch for the imagination. And I blame the author for it, because he creates such a solid reality in the story. Still, this is a great example of modern fantasy or magic-realism (whatever the literary term is for urban tales involving the supernatural). Solid, intelligent, entertaining fiction.