Who Would Like This Book:
This one’s for readers who love their fantasy twisted with mystery, occult secrets, and a touch of old Hollywood glamour. Tim Powers delivers his signature blend of real historical personalities, supernatural happenings, and mind-bending time travel, all wrapped in a decaying, atmospheric mansion. If you like darkly imaginative stories that unravel in unpredictable ways and enjoy piecing together cosmic puzzles with a noir-ish vibe, you’ll probably be hooked.
Who May Not Like This Book:
If you prefer books where everything clicks into place right away, or if you like super clear magic systems and instantly relatable characters, you might find this a tough ride. Several readers found the plot overly complicated, the magic (especially involving the spiders) hard to grasp, and some character motivations a bit thin. The pacing can be slow, and the first half might leave you feeling confused and disconnected until the pieces finally come together.
About:
Medusa's Web by Tim Powers is a contemporary fantasy novel set in modern-day Hollywood, featuring elements of time travel, mystery, and the occult. The story revolves around siblings Scott and Madeline Madden, who return to their aunt's eerie Hollywood estate after her death. As they navigate through family secrets, dysfunctional relationships, and supernatural spiders that enable time travel, they find themselves entangled in a complex web of mysteries spanning from the past to the present.
Genres:
Tropes/Plot Devices:
Topics:
Notes:
Sensitive Topics/Content Warnings
Content warnings might include themes of suicide, family trauma, and potential psychological distress related to the occult.
From The Publisher:
From the award-winning author of Hide Me Among the Graves, Last Call, Declare, and Three Days to Never, a phantasmagoric, thrilling, mind-bending tale of speculative fiction in which one man must uncover occult secrets of 1920s Hollywood to save his family.
In the wake of their Aunt Amity's suicide, Scott and Madeline Madden are summoned to Caveat, the eerie, decaying mansion in the Hollywood hills in which they were raised. But their decadent and reclusive cousins, the malicious wheelchair-bound Claimayne and his sister, Ariel, do not welcome Scott and Madeline's return to the childhood home they once shared. While Scott desperately wants to go back to their shabby South-of-Sunset lives, he cannot pry his sister away from this haunted "House of Usher in the Hollywood Hills" that is a conduit for the supernatural.
Decorated by bits salvaged from old hotels and movie sets, Caveat hides a dark family secret that stretches back to the golden days of Rudolph Valentino and the silent film stars. A collection of hypnotic eight-limbed abstract images inked on paper allows the Maddens to briefly fragment and flatten time-to transport themselves into the past and future in visions that are both puzzling and terrifying. Though their cousins know little about these ancient "spiders" which provoke unpredictable temporal dislocations, Ariel and Claimayne have been using for years-an addiction that has brought Claimayne to the brink of selfish destruction.
As Madeline falls more completely under Caveat's spell, Scott discovers that to protect her, he must use the perilous spiders himself. But will he unravel the mystery of the Madden family's past and finally free them. . . or be pulled deeper into their deadly web?
Ratings (1)
Liked It (1) |
Reader Stats (4):
Read It (1) | |
Want To Read (2) | |
Not Interested (1) |
What can you read after
Medusa's Web?
When you click the Amazon link and make a purchase, we may receive a small commision, at no cost to you.
