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Fault Lines series

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Last Call (Fault Lines -1) by Tim Powers 2

Last Call (Fault Lines #1) by Tim Powers

1. Last Call (1992)

The Fault Lines series , aka Last Call series, aka The Fisher King trilogy — by Tim Powers. 

Genres and Sub-Genres[]

Urban Fantasy

Series Description or Overview[]

Set in Las Vegas, Last Call concerns the fate of Scott Crane, former professional gambler, recent widower, blind in one eye—and also the lost natural son of the man who is determined to kill him. In this novel, Crane is forced to resume the high-stakes game of a lifetime-—and wager it all. ~ Goodreads

Lead's Species[]

Primary Supe[]

  • Ghosts

What Sets it Apart[]

Narrative Type and Narrators[]

  • First Person 

Books in Series[]

Last Call series:

  1. Last Call (1992)
  2. Expiration Date (1995)
  3. Earthquake Weather (1997)

World Building[]

Setting[]

  • Set in Las Vegas
  • set in Los Angeles

Supernatural Elements[]

✥ Magic users, ghosts, half-ghosts, and ghost hunters, and ghost junkies, necromancy,

Glossary:[]

Groups & Organizations:[]

World[]

Powers has created a strange and wonderful Los Angeles in which to set this novel: a city full of ghosts - and full, too, of unpleasant characters who extend their lives and enhance their power by catching and absorbing the ghosts of the recently dead. ~ Blurb book #2, 1996 by Tor

Protagonist[]

✥ Scott Crane: A former Poker player, going by the name of Scarecrow Smith, who unknowingly sold away his body and soul in a game of cards.

Sidekick[]

  • Name: / What: / Sidekick-to: / About: / Book First Seen:

Characters Chart[]

Characters What About
Scott Crane Poker player, going by the name of Scarecrow Smith, who unknowingly sold away his body and soul in a game of cards.
Archimedes Mavranos neighbor Scott's friend and neighbor
Georges Leon Scott's biological father
Oliver Crane Scott's foster father Went by the name Ozzie Smith when he played Poker for a living.
Diana Crane Oliver Crane's Foster child now grown up and with a family of her own. Her mother was the last Queen.
Bernadette Dinh taxi driver A taxi driver in Las Vegas, who's hiding from her brother - a Jack who wants her to be his Queen.
Ozzie A veteran poker player
Susan Scott's wife
Ben Siegel Mobster in old Las Vegas
Arky Scott's neighbor

Author[]

Tim Powers

  • Website:

Bio:

Cover Artist[]

Artist: Too many to list — Source:  Fault Lines - Series Bibliography

Awards[]

Publishing Information[]

  • Publisher:
  • Author Page:
  • Bk-1:

Book Cover Blurbs[]

✤ BOOK ONE BLURB—Last Call (1992): Set in Las Vegas, Last Call concerns the fate of Scott Crane, former professional gambler, recent widower, blind in one eye—and also the lost natural son of the man who is determined to kill him. In this novel, Crane is forced to resume the high-stakes game of a lifetime—and wager it all. ~ Goodreads | Fault Lines series by Tim Powers, 1996 by William Morrow

✤ One-time professional gambler Scott Crane hasn′t returned to Las Vegas, or held a hand of cards, in ten years. But troubling nightmares about a strange poker game he once attended on a houseboat on Lake Mead -- a contest he believed he walked away from a big winner -- are drawing him back to the magical city. Because the mythic game did not end that night in 1969. And the price of his winnings was his soul. And now a pot far more strange and perilous than he ever could imagine depends on the turning of a card. ~ (1993 by Avon ~ Goodreads)

Enchantingly dark and compellingly real, the World Fantasy Award-winning novel Last Call is a masterpiece of magic realism from critically acclaimed author Tim Powers. Set in the gritty, dazzling underworld known as Las Vegas, Last Call tells the story of a one-eyed professional gambler who discovers that he was not the big winner in a long-ago poker game . . . and now must play for the highest stakes ever as he searches for a way to win back his soul. ~ (2013 reprint by William Morrow ~ Goodreads)

✤ BOOK TWO BLURB—Expiration Date (1995): Los Angeles is filled with ghosts—and half-ghosts, and ghost hunters, and ghost junkies—chasing each other in a mad quest for immortality. As a series of disasters strikes Los Angeles, a young boy inhales the last breath of Thomas Edison, and becomes a precious prize in a deadly hunt for the elusive vital spark. Brimming with the wild imagination and heart-stopping escapades that won Tim Powers the World Fantasy Award, Expiration Date is an exuberant and inventive tale from one of fantasy's most original talents. ~ Goodreads | Expiration Date (Fault Lines, #2) by Tim Powers — Reviews, Discussion, Bookclubs, Lists

✤ Powers has created a strange and wonderful Los Angeles in which to set this novel: a city full of ghosts - and full, too, of unpleasant characters who extend their lives and enhance their power by catching and absorbing the ghosts of the recently dead. Young Koot Parganas is growing up in Los Angeles in the 1990's, but his parents won't let him do anything normal. His weirdo parents venerate the spirits of dead Mahatmas. At the age of eleven, Koot has disobeyed his parents, broken into a plaster bust of Dante, stolen the small glass vial concealed inside it, and set in motion events that will change his own life, and everyone else's. For trapped in the vial was the preserved ghost of Thomas Alva Edison, and there is no telling what power the possession of that ghost could confer. The exposure of Edison's ghost lights up a beacon for those who can see such things. Koot is pursued through the dark underside of the city, aided by allies as strange as his enemies: a bum and his dog; a man concealed by the ghostly mask of Houdini; a psychiatrist sorceress; and a former television child-star who has been dead for several years, but who is not yet ready to leave his body of abandon his revenge on the woman who murdered his godfather. ~ Goodreads | Expiration Date by Tim Powers ~ Hardcover, 1996 by Tor Books

✤ In the second book of the Fault Lines trilogy, Tim Powers dazzles with a dark and extraordinary urban fantasy set in an otherworldly LA, as a young boy finds himself targeted by malevolent ghost hunters. There is a Los Angeles that few people can see, a shadowed metropolis of ghosts, ghost hunters, and ghost junkies who crave the addictive rush of inhaled spirits. When eleven-year-old Koot Hoomie Parganas decides to flee the constrictive grasp of his New Age parents, he inadvertently steps into this world. Escaping with his parents’ most prized possession, Koot is soon the object of the most intense supernatural manhunt in history. On an ordinary day, Los Angeles can be treacherous; this “other” LA could prove downright fatal for an unsuspecting youngster who’s suddenly the target of every hungry ghost hunter prowling the City of Angels. But Koot will not be taken easily. And though not everyone racing to Koot’s side means him harm, they are greatly outnumbered by malevolent forces driven by a terrible, undeniable need. ~ Goodreads | Expiration Date by Tim Powers — Hardcover, 2008 by Subterranean Press

✤ BOOK THREE BLURB—Earthquake Weather (1997): A young woman possessed by a ghost has slain the Fisher King of the West, Scott Crane. Now, temporarily freed from that malevolent spirit, she seeks to restore the King to life. But Crane's body has been taken to the magically protected home of Pete and Angelica Sullivan, and their adopted son, Koot Hoomie. Kootie is destined to be the next Fisher king, but he is only thirteen years old—too young, his mother thinks, to perform the rituals to assume the Kingship. But not too young, perhaps, to assist in reuniting Scott Crane's body and spirit, and restoring him to life. ~ Goodreads | Earthquake Weather (Fault Lines, #3) by Tim Powers

✤ Janis Cordelia Plumtree has killed the King of the West--or at least one of the personalities in her head has killed him, and the other personalities are resolved to restore the king to life. But first Plumtree must escape from a mental hospital with ally Sid Cochran, a winemaker who believes that his wife was killed by Dionysus, the Greek god of madness and wine. Their quest for redemption and vengeance leads them to San Francisco, where they find themselves in the midst of a supernatural battle among several magicians-who-would-be-king, and finally to a tumultuous face-to-face confrontation with the god on the cliffs below the Golden Gate Bridge. ~ Goodreads | Earthquake Weather by Tim Powers ~ 2008 by Subterranean Press

First Sentences[]

  1. Last Call (1992) — George Leon held his little boy's hand too tightly and stared up from under his hatbrim at the unnaturally dark noon sky.
  2. Expiration Date (1995) — When he was little, say four or five, the living room had been as dim as a church all the time, with curtains pulled across the broad windows, and everywhere there had been the kind of big dark wooden furniture that's got stylized leaves and grapes and claws carved into it.
  3. Earthquake Weather (1997) — A pay telephone was ringing in the corridor by the rest rooms, but the young woman who had started to get up out of the padded orange-vinyl boot just blinked around in evident puzzlement and sat down again, tugging her denim jacket more tightly around her narrow shoulders.

Quotes[]

Read Alikes (similar elements)[]

  • See Category links at bottom of page

Awards[]

Trivia[]

Notes[]

See Also[]

Category links at bottom of page


UF Rank[]

~ ranked #71 on Goodreads | Best Urban Fantasy Series (181 series)

Notes[]

External References[]

Books:

World, Characters, etc:

Author,:

Community and Fan Sites:


Gallery of Book Covers[]

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