1992 marked something of a watershed for Powers fans with the publication of the World Fantasy Award winning Last Call. This extraordinary novel, rated by the author as perhaps his favourite work to date, began a trilogy which through Expiration Date has now reached its conclusion with Earthquake Weather.
This work showed something of a change in the style of Powers' writing, being the first of his novels (with the exception of a brief section of The Anubis Gates) to be given a truely contemporary setting. Here we are treated to a vision of modern day Las Vegas, but with that sourcerous torque that only Powers can give to a story.
Certain themes though are present here as they are in his other books. Again, we get a taste of this authors fascination with the idea of body-switching, just as in The Anubis Gates and On Stranger Tides, and once more Powers sends his central protagonist on a perilous supernatural journey in which his body and soul are continually under threat. (cf - Doyle in The Anubis Gates, Rivas in Dinner At Deviant's Palace, John Chandagnac in On Stranger Tides, Crawford in The Stress Of Her Regard .... and so on!!) Also noteworthy in Last Call is Powers' return to the myth of the The Fisher King, a theme he last touched upon back in 1979 with The Drawing Of The Dark.
Powers discusses many of these recurring themes and motifs in his work at some length in the Tim Powers Interview which you will find elsewhere on this site.
As with The Stress of Her Regard before it, Last Call was issued by two publishers simultaneously.
With this novel Powers moved from Ace, his publisher of nearly ten years, to William Morrow & Company having secured a lucrative two book deal. The first of the two came out in April 1992 to great acclaim but problems hit the publishing house in 1993 and Powers and his agent prudently decided to buy the second book in the deal back from Morrow. This meant returning the advance. By this time Powers had finished the outline for his next book and so Expiration Date and Earthquake Weather (or "Extreme Unction" as it was then being called) were offered for auction to other publishers. They were both bought by Beth Meacham (editor of The Anubis Gates) at Tor.
The Morrow Last Call was a hard cover edition and carried the ISBN 0-688-10732-X. The cover art was by Rick Lovell and it was priced at $23.00. My thanks to Mike Berro for the image of the uncorrected proof.
Following on from the beautiful editions of The Stress of her regard produced by Charnel House, Joe Stefko published a special limited edition of Last Call. Two states were issued and featured artwork by Peter Richardson and J.K.Potter, the latter artist now particularly associated with Powers. They also featured an extra poem and a slightly different text to the Morrow edition. 350 were signed, numbered and boxed at a price of $150.00 and carried the ISBN 0-927389-05-3. A further 26 lettered copies (ISBN 0-927389-04-5) were also issued and were originally priced at $600.00. As illustrated above, each of the twenty-six copies has a different tarot card on the front. This lettered state is perhaps the most collectable of all the editions of Powers work and therefore merits a page of its very own on this site.
And if you've not already done so - check out the Charnel House article written exclusively for this web site by Joe Stefko - the man behind these extraordinary limited editions. In it he details how his association with Powers came about and how it led to these much sought after and collectable books.
The paperback version of Last Call was published in October 1993 by Avon. ISBN 0-380-71557-0, the cover price was $4.99. The cover artist is not credited.
The only UK appearence of this Powers is a paperback released by HarperCollins in December of 1993. There was no hard cover ever issued in the UK not has there ever been a reprint of the paperback. Hard to beleive given the awards this novel scooped! Now very difficult to locate, this paperback carried the ISBN 0-586-21452-6 and was priced at £4.99.
The most recent edition was put out by Avon as a trade paperback. This has a redesigned cover and carries the ISBN 0-380-72846-X. It is priced at $13.00 and can still be ordered online. Try the Amazon link below to order a copy now.
For the other editions listed on this page try these links to Bookfinder.com or the Advanced Book Exchange (fill in the search form) to see the current state of the Last Call market.
If you can add to this list please e-mail me.
If you're looking at this page without having read this book, turn off your computer and pick up a copy immediately !!!! If you won't take my word on how good this novel is, you may be interested to know that Last Call won the following accolades on its publication :-
Page created 30th May 1998 - Last Updated:
© John Berlyne
