Books in the Post! 'Anticipated' Edition

Its been a quiet week for books coming through the post; its been a quiet week in general actually with settling down into a new work routine (minutes, lots and lots of minutes...) and not an awful lot of reading getting done. It's not all bad though, I'm halfway through 'She Who Waits' (it has only taken me a year to get this far) and it's an excellent read. Bit gutted that I skipped to the end, to see what happened, but if I will insist on spoiling books for myself... I also managed to get Amazon to pay my bank charges but that's another story altogether :o)

A couple of good looking books have found their way home though and it seems to be all about adding to collections this week. Check em' out...

Ever since Gollancz announced their new Fantasy Masterworks series, I've been waiting to get my hands on a copy of 'Votan', the only book on the list that I'd never heard of. Also, look at the lovely cover; isn't it glorious?

In the second century AD, a Greek nobleman is travelling and living abroad in Germany while carrying on an affair with a military man's wife. When discovered, he takes an emergency business trip to save his life and packs amongst his belongings certain items that lead the people he encounters to think him a Norse God, a fortuitous point of view which he does little to dispel. Forced to keep up the pretence of being a god while staying one step ahead of his lover's jealous husband, Photinus must juggle the severity of his situation with the enjoyment of being a god.

On the strength of that blurb, 'Votan' doesn't look like it has any right to be in a series of 'Fantasy Masterworks' but I'm going to give it a go anyway and see what happens.

'The Drawing of the Dark' was a surprise find whilst on the way home from dropping Sue and the kids off at the station. I'd pretty much stopped collecting the old Fantasy Masterworks ('collection burnout') but the instinct is still there and when I saw 'The Drawing of the Dark' on the shelf I was handing over money for it before I even realised what was happening. I still haven't read anything by Tim Powers, really need to do something about that.

One question before I go, have any of you read 'The Drawing of the Dark'? The only reason I'm asking is because the tagline on the back of this edition reads, 'Myth, Magic and Mystery as East meets West in Mortal Combat'. Is that a fair summary of the book or did the blurb guy get a little carried away...?