I probably would have liked this novel better had I read it before the COVID outbreak, and the possible threat of major-power military action, in that I'm in the emotional space where a story trading on looming existential threat has a lot of hurdles to get over. Still, the high concepts that Powers offers you are never less than interesting, and the climax of this story, involving a metaphysical labyrinth with the potential to seriously damage the reality of the characters, was actually pretty good. Maybe my problem boils down to how I'm not sure that Powers has ever really created a female POV character that has really impressed me, and I needed more from Ingrid Castine; to be fair, my reading in Powers' backlist is not all it could be. ( )

Tim Powers has to be the most creatively original fantasist alive. In this book he first grounds us in a starkly real Los Angeles, then takes us off a nonexistent off ramp of the Pasadena Freeway into a desert netherworld where nothing makes sense and anything is possible.

Powers is probably my favorite writer. I've read just about everything he's written and he's never disappointed me. ( )

Alternate Routes is a combination of the myth of Daedalus and the horror with which long-time residents of Los Angeles regard their infamous freeway system. I’m not an Angeleno, but I don’t find a supernatural conjunction between the LA freeways and the Minotaur’s Labyrinth at all implausible.

To give you an idea of how differently writers of fantastical literature have approached similar subjects, consider Gregory Benford’s Artifact. Benford went with a de-mythologizing, hard sci-fi take on the Minotaur, making it a magnetic monopole trapped in a cube of stone. Powers has none of that. His Minotaur is a primordial force of nature, or anti-nature, and it wants out of its prison, insofar as such a thing can be said to want anything. Even when two authors choose to mine the same source material for a book, the end result is very different after being refracted through their own choices. Although I will give Benford high marks for his obvious love of Boston in that book.

Of course, Powers also brings in ghosts, because that is just how he rolls. Yet, Powers manages to make Alternate Routes feel different than his previous books featuring ghosts and Los Angeles. Rather unlike his ghosts, who just endlessly repeat the same things over and over because they lack a vital spark, Powers instead is riffing on a theme. The spectral remnants of Expiration Date were mostly idiots, echoes in time and space, primarily useful for the nefarious purposes of the living. The ghosts in Alternate Routes have both more pathos and more malevolence, a greater propensity to exact revenge or seek forgiveness.

Which is thematically appropriate, as Powers is here playing with chaos and order, free will and determinism, as contraries with the Golden Mean, humanity, somewhere in-between. The myth of Daedalus the Artificer, the root of Greek mechanical ingenuity, is contrasted with the fundamental disorder of the Minotaur, and yet neither is complete, nor independent of the other.

In much the same way, the chaos of the LA freeways is enabled by the very technological prowess that made it possible to build such things. As an Arizonan, I find the stop-and-go traffic of the LA freeways and their improvised and chaotic exchanges maddening compared to Phoenix, another desert city five hours east with a far better freeway system. My wife’s late grandfather Bill, who lived nearly his whole life in Los Angeles, delighted in using his detailed knowledge of the surface streets to route us around blockages on the LA freeways. I’ve met many others who feel much the same. I too feel that the LA freeways are a kind of infernal nexus, but it takes Tim Powers to wrap that frustration into a story of myth and legend which also happens to be quite an adventure.

As is typical for him, Powers also works in themes of intense personal loss, redeemed with Catholic hope. Daedalus’ son Icarus plunged into the sea after their escape from the Labyrinth. Sebastian Vickery will not get off any easier, for he must face the existential horror of meeting a potential child who never was; a possible source of joy strangled in the crib by his decision to sterilize himself years before his marriage. Few other writers can put into words the wound that surgical sterilization puts into a marriage, but Powers does.

Yet, for all that, Powers puts some whimsy in Alternate Routes, from the Pico Kosher Deli, a reference to Powers’ friend Phil Dick, and Castine’s joke about Route 666, a once extant spur of Route 66 in Arizona and New Mexico.

Poetry also plays a big role in Alternate Routes. The epic Metamorphoses by Ovid figures prominently, much as Lewis Carroll did in Expiration Date or T. S. Eliot in Last Call. Knowledge of poetry becomes a powerful defense for Castine and Vickery, but they struggle a bit, as memorizing poetry is no longer common.

That got me wondering, who was the last truly popular poet in English? Seuss? Kipling? Poetry is not dead, but is certainly moribund in English. Poetry used to be seen as the pinnacle of literature, pace Ovid, Dante, Homer, Milton, et al., but now it is mostly seen as ridiculous. Powers engaged in some gentle mockery of poetry in The Drawing of the Dark, with the buffoonish Kretchmer fancying himself a poet, to the derision of everyone else.

Alternate Routes also feels a bit more topical than I’m used to with Powers, with a nefarious alphabet agency engaged in dubiously legal post-death surveillance of “deleted persons” as an antagonist. Rogue intelligence agents aren’t a new theme with Powers, but whole rogue agencies are.

Overall, I found this book fun. Powers is dialing down the secret history, and amping up the myth and adventure. Alternate Routes is fast-paced and full of action, accelerating and decelerating as frequently as traffic on the I-10. His protagonist, Sebastian Vickery, is a relatable everyman, scraping by on the gig economy [with ghosts, of course] after narrowly escaping the rogue agency. I think Powers fans will find this book worthwhile, as well as anyone who likes fantastical adventure. ( )

Los Angeles freeways with off-ramps that appear and disappear, offering a glimpse of an empty desert highway. Covert government agencies with secret agendas and an assortment of oddball characters (real, imagined and somewhere in between) all populate the latest ghost story from the mind of Tim Powers in Alternate Routes. Sebastian Vickery, ex-Secret Service agency living off the grid and driving for supernatural-evasion car service stumbles onto as supernatural events appear to be ramping up and heading for a place where not only his life is in danger, but all of Los Angeles is in danger.

Vickery is aided by agent Ingrid Castine, a homeless boy, and a few supernatural or supernatural adjacent friends. In order to save themselves and L.A., they may have to travel down the ghost ramp into that strange desert world of the Labyrinth. A world that few people have returned from.

There is no denying that Tim Powers is talented. He creates a fascinating world with enough similarities to our own that the bizarre twists and turns feel more jarring the more you learn about how this world is different. It takes a bit of concentration to follow the turns in the plot, but Powers manages to bring the story together for an exciting conclusion. There are a number of characters who are quite interesting, but Vickery and Castine as the main characters don’t stand out quite enough for the prominent role they play in the story.

The audiobook is narrated by Bronson Pinchot who is an amazing voice actor who quickly makes you forget that it is only one person narrating these many characters. Given the ghostly tone of some characters and sections of the book, it does make hearing difficult unless you are in a low-noise environment.

The pacing is steady and Powers is always interesting. While an entertaining read/listen, I wouldn’t recommend this as the first book to sample Powers’s writing. If you are already a fan, you will enjoy this book as well.

I was provided a copy of this audiobook by the publisher. ( )

Only 5 months late in reading this; it was my birthday present last year.

Another of Tim Powers trademark urban fantasies or secret histories. Here the weirdness centres on the Californian freeways; the flow of traffic creates power and the ability to switch dimensions - specifically to the Labyrinth ruled over by Daedalus. The power also supports ghosts - people who died on or close to the freeways.

The hero is a former cop turned Secret Service agent who heard a phenomenon and was nearly executed by the TSU. Staying one step ahead of the TSU, he is surviving in the shadows, working for a business taking advantage of the power generated by the freeways.

And then his old life catches up with him...

Recommended.