Book Review: The Stress of Her Regard by Tim Powers

There are many fans of vampire fiction who have never heard of Tim Powers’ The Stress of Her Regard. Powers, like Stephen King (Salem’s Lot) and Suzy McKee Charnas (The Vampire Tapestry) is not a “vampire author.” His oeuvre is a style of fantasy known as “secret history.” Powers begins with real life people and events and weaves alternate versions of their “official” stories, suggesting unknown, and usually magical or occult, influences at work behind the recorded facts. Powers is one of the original authors whose style inspired the “steampunk” genre, which has become very popular, and which naturally overlaps with a great deal of vampire fiction set in the 18th and 19th centuries.

But Tim Powers’ work defies easy categorization, and in many ways fits the newly recognized realm of Instititial Arts: creative work that combines, transcends or falls between standardized genre definitions. The Stress of Her Regard (reissue edition 2008, Tachyon Publications) is fantasy, horror, literary fiction, historical fiction and vampire novel all at the same time. Originally published in 1989, at the beginning of a massive revival in vampire fiction, it’s unquestionably one of the most unusual vampire tales written in the last six decades.

This is a literary novel in the classic sense: long, leisurely, meticulously crafted, and full of allusions to literature and cultural motifs. The plot spans six years and multiple countries, although the story, altogether, forms a sweeping epic beginning at the dawn of time. Powers never drops big expository boulders on his readers’ heads, though—the complicated mystery of the lamia, or Nephelim, whose “regard” for their beloved victims is so destructive, unwinds bit by bit as the tale progresses. Readers will need to pay attention and keep a good memory for small details, because even the tiniest may be an important clue.

The story opens in 1816, introducing Powers’ alternate universe versions of Lord Byron, Percy Shelley, Mary Godwin, John Polidori, and Mary’s stepsister Claire Claremont. They’re in Switzerland on the lakeside summer get-away that so famously resulted in the penning of Frankenstein and “The Vampyre” by Mary Godwin and Polidori, respectively. However, it becomes apparent that Shelley’s greatest concerns aren’t literary. Twice he’s thrown into a panic by the appearance of a powerful, and evidently malign, phantom figure that resembles a woman. Shelley is being pursued by something very persistent, and he seems prepared to die rather than be overwhelmed by it.

We meet the book’s central protagonist, Dr. Michael Crawford, as he travels with several inebriated friends to his second wedding. Crawford, in his 30s, has a past marred by several deaths. Before long we have hints that the loss of his first wife in a fire occurred under suspicious circumstances, and that bitter memories are the least of the evils haunting her widower. When the wedding party stops at an inn, Crawford makes an unthinking mistake. He places his fiancée’s wedding ring on the finger of what he believes is a statue while he assists one of his friends. He loses the ring when the statue first changes position, then disappears. Like Victor in Tim Burton’s film The Corpse Bride, Crawford has unwittingly given Something Else reason to think he’s married to it.

Article Author: Vyrdolak

Inanna Arthen (Vyrdolak) is the creator of the website By Light Unseen, owner of the small press By Light Unseen Media and author of Mortal Touch. An authority on vampire lore, Forteana and alternative culture, she is a fascinated observer and commentator …

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