Publisher's Synopsis
NATIONAL BESTSELLER. A New Novel From Award-Winning Master of Fantasy and Science Fiction Tim Powers. A modern ghost story as only Tim Powers can write it.
THE WILD RIDE BETWEEN LIFE AND DEATH HAS BEGUN! Something weird is happening on the Los Angeles Freeways--phantom cars materialize, lanes appear from nowhere, and unmarked offramps lead into another world known as the Labyrinth of Forever. As a driver for a supernatural-evasion car service, it's Sebastian Vickery's job to avoid these anomalies. But when a secret government agency tries to have him killed for knowing too much, Vickery must plunge headlong into that plane of ghosts, myths, and legends. There he'll discover that he has much more to fear than death: something lurks in that otherworldly realm--and it has designs on our world. About Alternate Routes:"Powers continues his run of smashing expectations and then playing with the pieces in this entertaining urban fantasy. . . . this calculated, frenetic novel ends with hope for redemption born from chaos. Powers' work is recommended for urban fantasy fans who enjoy more than a dash of the bizarre."--Publishers Weekly "Alternate Routes is both a thrilling mash-up of science fiction, fantasy, and horror and a work of startling moral sophistication. The horror packs a wallop, and there's as much in the way of suspense and tension as the reader can bear. Powers takes us on one hell of a ride."--The Federalist "Tim Powers is always at the top of the list when folks ask about my favorite authors. His weaving mythology and legend into modern stories that revolve around secret histories of our most mundane landmarks never ever disappoints. This introduction to his new characters Sebastian Vickery and Ingrid Castine is wonderful."--BoingBoing About Tim Powers:
"Powers writes in a clean, elegant style that illuminates without slowing down the tale. . . . [He] promises marvels and horrors, and delivers them all."--Orson Scott Card "Other writers tell tales of magic in the twentieth century, but no one does it like Powers."--The Orlando Sentinel ". . . immensely clever stuff.... Powers' prose is often vivid and arresting . . . All in all, Powers' unique voice in science fiction continues to grow stronger."--Washington Post Book World "Powers is at heart a storyteller, and ruthlessly shapes his material into narrative form."--The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction "On Stranger Tides . . . immediately hooks you and drags you along in sympathy with one central character's appalling misfortunes on the Spanish Main, [and] escalates from there to closing mega-thrills so determinedly spiced that your palate is left almost jaded."--David Langford "On Stranger Tides . . . was the inspiration for Monkey Island. If you read this book you can really see where Guybrush and LeChuck were -plagiarized- derived from, plus the heavy influence of voodoo in the game. . . . [the book] had a lot of what made fantasy interesting . . ."--legendary game designer Ron Gilbert "Powers's strengths [are] his originality, his action-crammed plots, and his ventures into the mysterious, dark, and supernatural." Los Angeles Times Book Review "[Powers' work delivers] an intense and intimate sense of period or realization of milieu; taut plotting, with human development and destiny . . . and, looming above all, an awareness of history itself as a merciless turning of supernatural wheels. . . . Powers' descriptions . . . are breathtaking, sublimely precise . . . his status as one of fantasy's major stylists can no longer be in doubt."--SF Site "Powers creates a mystical, magical otherworld superimposed on our own and takes us on a marvelous, guided tour of his vision."--Science Fiction Chronicle "The fantasy novels of Tim Powers are nothing if not ambitious . . . Meticulously researched and intellectually adventurous, his novels rarely fail to be strange and wholly original."--San Francisco Chronicle
