Alternate Routes

Alternate Routes is very much a Tim Powers book, with familiar character types in strange situations. The novel is set in a world just off-kilter from our own, where ghosts—erm, deleted persons—roam the freeways, and are spreading. With officers who can talk to ghosts and two government agents in their sights, this novel is a mad dash to save the world from the afterworld that threatens to swallow it. From the afterworld of the Labyrinth to the LA freeways and falling like Icarus, this story ranges from the barely-real to the hyper-real and definitely wanders into the weird.

This was a difficult book to get into. A lot happens very fast, and it doesn’t all make sense immediately. It’s a book where it pays to go back and reread snippets to track what’s happened and gain a more nuanced understanding of the story. While it is a strange, even haunting, story that mixes Greek mythology, government conspiracy, the dead, and the never-born, it becomes clearer the more familiar one gets with the world. Story conventions and structures help ground the story, while elements that are surprising and new keep readers invested.