Tim Powers' latest story is a ghost story. But that's redundant because all of Powers stories are ghost stories.
In this one, three somewhat-bumbling professors visit a graveyard, bringing strange and arcane devices, trying to capture the ghost of a recently deceased scientist. They come back with more than they expected. We've got alternate realities, quantum physics, and maybe even love.
If I have one complaint, it's that More Broken Walls feels too short. With more room, Powers could have expanded some characters a bit. As it is, it's a solid story from one of my favorite authors.
Thanks to Netgalley and Subterranean Press for the copy I received in exchange for an honest review.

Published by Subterranean Press on February 28, 2019

More Walls Broken is a short and sweet novella. It is to Tim Powers’ credit that he didn’t try to pad the story. The story has just enough substance to work as a novella but not enough to sustain a full-length novel.

Clive Cobb wants to get tenure. To that end, he’s been roped into helping two other professors in the Consciousness Research Department as they try to raise and capture the consciousness of their recently deceased department head. They want him to share knowledge that he took to the grave. Trapping his soul in a concoction of chocolate and rum (who could resist?) might not be the most ethical way of uncovering that information, which is one reason Cobb feels dicey about helping his colleagues.

The experiment goes awry when the deceased professor’s daughter appears. Did the dead professor’s soul transmigrate into his daughter? Transmigration of souls was one of the professor’s theories. Cobb has his doubts.

The mystery deepens when the professor’s daughter claims to have just left her father, who was very much alive. Perhaps she is not the person she appears to be.

The heart of the story examines the fork in a life, illustrating how one decision can have unintended and unexpected consequences that change not only our own lives, but the lives of others. It is both a story of regret and of second chances. It isn’t a complex or particularly deep story, but it doesn’t pretend to be. In its simplicity, however, it reveals simple truths about the need to live your best life in a way that doesn’t ruin other lives or produce uncorrectable regrets.

RECOMMENDED

Thank you to Netgalley and the Publisher for providing me with a copy of this in exchange for my honest opinion.

Right from the get-go of this regrettably short story, you get two impressions. Impression the first, Tim Powers is an excellent writer. The story flows smoothly, the dialog is excellent, and the plot is intriguing. The second, the first few chapters are Keystone Cops (the professors) in a graveyard. This story is not a comedy, but I found the first few chapters funny. What this is, is a modern-day occult ghost story. Three professors from Cal-tech enter a graveyard to perform an occult ritual to materialize the ghost of departed Armand Vitrielli, what happens is they materialize Vitrelli's daughter instead. They flee the cemetery with the "daughter" in tow (keystone cops part) completely missing what emerged after they left. From this beginning, Powers crafts a well written, if sometimes bland plot. The story is solid, but after the initial chapters in the graveyard it didn't resonate and connect with me as much as I would have liked it too. I would certainly want to read Power's other works, however. Powers is an excellent writer of dialog and story flow. But this just wasn't my favorite.

I’m struggling to review this book. I received an unedited ARC from Netgalley, which means that I should ignore grammar/prose issues, but those things play a major role in a novel’s quality as well as readability and enjoyability. It’s one of the main things I critique because bad writing bothers me so much!

The paragraphs weren’t indented, making the entire novel appear as one big blob that I found myself spacing-out from on numerous occasions, forced to backtrack just to risk it happening all over again. <b>There were typos, incorrect usage of words, and other formatting issues that I just couldn’t handle!</b> This biggest of them being Cobb’s random first-person internal monologues in a story written in third-person POV—it made me want to vomit.

There, now that I’ve got that all out, maybe I can review the story itself more clearly and try, TRY not to let the lack of editing affect my judgement.

More Walls Broken attempts to redefine seances, suggesting they are as much paranormal as they are scientific. Cobb, Ainsworth, and Blaine attempt to resurrect a colleague of there’s, but the more they meddle, the more everything backfires.

It sounds good on paper, but this story just felt bland to me.

The dialogue was so disorienting. One character would ask a question and no one would answer, another would reference something or speak vaguely about something I’d never heard of. The conversations didn’t flow organically, they clunked around like rusted gears on a clock, going through the motions with loud raucous and little else.

Every scene felt longer than it needed to be, and yet like it wasn’t complete. The story itself felt rushed but the writing seemed to dawdle at the most inconvenient times.

I just... I’m sorry. I’ve learned my lesson. I will no longer accept any unedited ARCs because I clearly can’t get over all of the technical issues and plot/character issues that will probably get corrected after the editing process. So please, if you’re reading this, take this review with a grain of salt.

More Walls Broken has the intrigue of an 80s paranormal film, complete with witty and accessible writing, the drama of a father—daughter relationship gone sour, and a race to right the wrongs caused by a misunderstood device. It’s a quick jaunt of a novella, and thoroughly enjoyable for fans of paranormal and modern fantasy alike.

Powers goes beyond the supernatural to examine familial ties, asking what it would be like to see another version of yourself, to find out things went differently in another time and place. There were good and bad changes on either side, and watching the two characters play them out and deal with those changes was quite interesting.

The focus on the paranormal aspects was intriguing as well, with the characters going in-depth into their theories about ghosts and connections between worlds. The bumbling, villainous professors on the sidelines were downright awful by the end, showing the dangers of getting too close to success and forgetting about ethical obligations.

Overall, More Walls Broken was a thought-provoking look at the concept of multiple realities and the overlap with the spirit world. It reiterates an important lesson: nothing good happens in a cemetery at night, especially when a supernatural conjuration device is involved.

A solid speculative ghost-story novella with science, and a great writing style -- A very interesting combo. I also liked the tech and the parts that make you think (e.g. sound). Other than the abrupt ending, I recommend it.

In modern day Los Angeles, three Cal Tech professors enter a graveyard to perform a mysterious ritual which they hope will raise the ghost of a recently deceased professor. But things don't turn out exactly the way they expect, and each must try to deal with the consequences in their own way.

This is not your average ghost story. “More Walls Broken” by Tim Powers is a fascinating genre-bending speculative fiction novella with three things I love to read about: ghosts, powerful and intriguing devices, and quantum physics. Powers’ clear, direct, concrete writing voice keeps the story grounded in reality while dealing with the scope of a science-bending romp into the multi-verse. This is exactly the kind of story I love to dig into, and I read it straight through to the end. I found myself pulling it out at every little chance to sit and read, just to find out would happen next.

The characters of “More Walls Broken” have depth and complexity. Our hero, Clive Cobb, is an imperfect and disappointed (but not disappointing) sort of anti-hero with a solid moral compass buried underneath his brooding demeanor, and we get a real chance at seeing his soft inner core. I appreciate the way Powers handles the characters. Without giving too much away about the story, unseen characters are discussed that raise interesting questions about the nature of personality and identity.

Really, this book raises a lot of questions and gets you thinking about deeper ideas being dealt with on the page. For example, the device used in the first pages of the story operates in a unique way involving sound. I loved that, and I also enjoyed the careful description of the device and its use, as well as how Cobb felt using the device. I could really envision it.

The places where I struggled with this novella were the beginning and the end. The opening sentence is convoluted and felt passive. In the first few pages I struggled to identify characters and determine who was ultimately the main character. For example, one of the significant supporting characters is first described as an “elderly driver,” even though we soon get his name and other details. The point of view is limited third person tied to Clive Cobb, who knows who the elderly driver is, but it’s as if we are starting out as one of the novel’s ghosts and gently floating into Cobb’s head. This may have been the author’s intent, and it would certainly make sense in hindsight given the novella’s themes, but as a first impression it left me floundering to find my footing with the story. Once we’d arrived at the cemetery and established characters, the story picked up for me and I was able to dig into the developing tension and mystery, but it was a jerky start.

This is a novella, and by definition short, but the story seemed to be too short for me. The ending felt chopped off and unsatisfying, coming at a moment in the story when I felt a strongest investment and interest in two of the main characters: Clive Cobb and a woman named Taysha. I was left with more questions than answers, and I wanted to see where it all went. This is a testament to the character development and world building of the novella’s author, Tim Powers. I want more, and it makes me wonder if this is the first novella in a developing series. If it is, I will definitely be continuing with future installments. If not, then I am still left with an enjoyable and worthwhile read that was evocative and thought provoking. Either way I will definitely be reading more of his books in the future.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Subterranean Press for providing an advanced reading copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

More Walls Broken by Tim Powers
More Walls Broken
by Tim Powers
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Lou Jacobs's review Dec 19, 2018 · edit
it was amazing

Enter a world where it's perfectly acceptable to have adjacent worlds of alternate time lines. The setting ... 3 professors .... 2 old and irascible and bumbling and 1 younger and adept ... are at the gravesite of Armand Vitrielli in a chilly moonlit cemetery ... ready to embark on a scientific enterprise utilizing Vitrielli's device - the "slide-rule" - to cleave reality. And, hopefully allow Vitrielli's ghost to materialize allowing his capture and interrogation. Clive Cobb, the younger professor from California State University's Consciousness Research Department , is knowledgeable on using Professor Vitrielli's device ... But, instead of conjuring up the Professor, his daughter unceremoniously plops out of thin air onto the gravesite in an unconscious state .... and all are perplexed.
The keystone cops of a group flee the cemetery with "daughter" in tow .. only to miss another entity coalesce at the grave. Has Vitrielli's soul been transmigrated across the time continuum?
This sets up Powers' complicated plot regarding possible alternate realities and serious consequences with interference. Powers with aplomb makes the situation entirely believable and riddles the landscape with comic happenstance in an effort for Cobb to set things right.
Thanks to Netgalley and #Subterranean Press for providing an Uncorrected Ebook proof of this delightful tale in exchange for an honest review!!

More Walls Broken by Tim Powers- A rather sedate occult novella. Three University professors skulk to the local cemetery, planning to séance a deceased colleague back to life so they can steal the secrets he took to the grave. Of course, things don't go as planned. What they get is an unexpected outcome, and a lesson in the transmutation of reality. Well told and with heart, but not as engaging as some of Tim Powers' previous offerings.

More Walls Broken by Tim Powers, A nice little novella. Three men trying to summon their old colleague back to answer questions about his methods get more than they bargain for ...

How is it possible that Mr. Powers just keeps getting better and better? How does he continue to reach new heights in mystery / horror when I think each new book just can't be topped? This offering is one of the best TP I've read, with (yet another) unique premise and evocative style. If you've already read Mr. Powers' works, then you know why I use the superlatives that I do; if you haven't read him yet, you need to. As always, highly recommended!

This is a long short story, a fairly quick read that really just has one idea. It's a silly little ghost story about what if a professor invented a means to raise ghosts but something else was raised instead. Then they spend the rest of the story trying to fix what happened. It's fairly anti-climactic so I'm not sure what Powers was really going for here.

In every single story by this illustrious and utterly imaginative author is contained a core that is magical. Mr. Powers surpasses telekinesis and "Scotty's" "Beam me up" transporter from Star Trek. If there is anyone who can "magically" (or "quantumly") effect travel through dimensions, that person is this author. There is no need for suspension of disbelief. Belief is intrinsic. There is no need to parse the reader's feelings for the character; we know intrinsically who is good and who is not, and we line up with them accordingly. Tim Powers possesses an illimitable imagination, and for the duration of reading his work, so do we. The wonderful aspect is that this expansion of imagination does not end when we close the book: it lasts forever, and we are different individuals after than when we came in.

I only wish that MORE WALLS BROKEN had been a novel, not a novella; it has a terrifically cliffhanging ending, and this inquiring mind needs to know: "What happened? And in which world? Are the "good characters" all right, in the end? Did the "bad guys" get their just desserts?"

To the final question, I already know the answer.
"Can I believe?"
"Yes, I can."