I tried to like this book, I really did. It seemed to have all sorts of things going for it that I usually like - strange supernatural/fantasy events taking place within the ordinary real world, and a bunch of different story threads that eventually tie together into a cohesive tale. Both of those usually lend themselves to books that I enjoy, but I think both of them were a little overdone in this case. After a while I started to get frustrated, and I decided it just wasn't worth sticking it out for things to start happening and make sense, so I gave up.I thought this was a standalone book, but looking at some of the summaries, I now see that it takes place in a world introduced in Powers' Last Call. This may explain some of my initial confusion with this novel, as perhaps some of the concepts are detailed in that book first. The main idea is that people have ways of hunting ghosts and that they like to ingest them as a sort of drug. Not that it needs a lot of explanation, but it's brushed off in this book like an "oh yeah, everybody eats ghosts. You knew that, right?"The downside is that the ghost-eating is really the only thing that goes on in this book. There are what feel like a dozen characters and they all go about chasing ghosts. The kid accidentally ingests one, the mysterious antagonist is chasing after some, the guy who's a natural ghost chaser is hiding so he doesn't have to go get them, etc. Of course, by the time I quit, there was nothing connecting these people, so it was just a bunch of truncated separate storylines about eating ghosts.And there do seem to be a lot of separate storylines. I thought there were probably too many characters, some of which are introduced for a snippet that doesn't relate at all to the other threads and then we move on to something else. Without much to differentiate all the ancillary characters, they started to blur together to me and become less interesting. It was a neat idea, but I almost felt I needed to keep notes on who everyone was and how they interrelated.I did enjoy parts of this book, which is why I gave it two stars even without finishing it. It was written fairly well, but I just didn't want to keep reading without something happening to somehow connect all these vague characters. Perhaps if you stick with it to the end there's some payoff, but for a book I was reading just for fun it didn't seem worth my time. A decent book, it seems, but there are better out there.
Oh, Tim Powers. You're so very, very clever. And yet something, somewhere is missing in this book. The blurb on the back of the book jacket describes the author as "the astonishingly popular Tim Powers", and in this book at least, I am astonished as to his popularity too. I cannot make my mind up about Powers'work. On Stranger Tideswas a rip-roaring success, The Anubis Gateswas the most human, relateable and interesting of his works I've read so far,The Stress of Her Regard had so many amazing ideas and fantastic world-building, but suffered from an over-awareness of its own cleverness. But this book just did not do it for me. It dragged. I was bored reading it. The characters were uninteresting despite having interesting enough back stories, but oh - interesting back-story does not an interesting character make. The plot dragged on, and was confusing and (it felt like) deliberately opaque. About fifty pages in I noticed from the Goodreads title (Fault Lines, #2) that Expiration Date is the second book in a series. Aha, thought I, here is my mistake. I am finding it hard to relate to this book because I am midway through a series. But after reading other Goodreads reviews with similar gripes, I realised that this book can easily be read as a standalone. It is not that Expiration Date is part of a series that makes for a tedious read, but the book itself. I can't remember the last time I was so desperate to finish a book. And yet a part of me wants to read the first and third books in the series. But not for a very long time. At last the deed was done, the book is finished, and I am turning toHow to Build a Girlas a palate cleanser before I launch into any more urban fantasy. Time for a change.
What do You think about Expiration Date (2007)?
This was hard work and it has taken me months to read - I should have just given up on it after the first 100 odd pages. Having liked Last Call, I was determined to press on with this odd story and it was not really worth my time. The story takes a very long time to get going and is narrated by several different characters - a bit all over the place. It kind of comes together at the end and the pace and interest level picked up a bit, but I have to say that I really did not enjoy this book and I will not be seeking out the third part of this 'loose' trilogy. An unrelated thing that made this a poor reading experience was the shocking Kindle version which was so full of typos and formatting errors, it must have never have been proof read by a real person. All this has delayed me reading my last ever Iain Banks book *sob*
—David H
I found it really hard to actually care about the fate of any of these characters. Not sure why - maybe it was because it seemed like any one of them could die (or something equivalent for the ones that were already dead), any moment. So I didn't want to invest any feelings towards any of them.The world Tim Powers created was certainly interesting, and I liked how it was fed to the reader in bits and pieces. I didn't like how it seemed every time you were given enough clues to piece together some connection between characters, the author then explicitly described said connection, just in case you missed it. I prefer when at least a bit of thought is required from the reader.Overall: it was ok.
—Angela
In this book like his others, Tim Powers displays an astonishing creativity and an ingenious blending of fantasy with historical fact. Unfortunately, the author introduces so many characters and delays the explanations for what is going on so long that the reader is left confused for about half the novel. For a novel this long, that is a considerable amount of time feeling frustrated and remembering a great deal of yet unconnected information.Once things begin to make sense, though, the reading experience becomes better. The novel is always impressive, and the second half, at least, is entertaining.
—Xenophon Hendrix
