“PARIS 1925. Harry Nolan is an expatriate American, making a meager living as an illustrator for a low-paying magazine, but his life is upended when he is assigned to illustrate an anonymous article about the death of a god—because a centuries-old French brotherhood, the Sauteurs, are determined to suppress the story the article tells. The Sauteurs have burned the magazine’s office and killed the editor, and Nolan has the only surviving copy of the article. The author turns out to be a local writer named Ernest Hemingway, who—at first—tries to distance himself from the article and its lethal consequences. Vivi Chastain is a rootless 19-year-old orphan who sustains herself by betting on horse races—aided by the spirit of the man she was in a previous life. But now that old identity is crowding her consciousness, threatening to push her own precarious identity into oblivion. It was her alcoholic occasional “stepfather” who told Hemingway the story about killing a god, and the Sauteurs are now aware of the story—and of her”
Unlike a lot Tim Powers books, this tale seems a bit rushed and not as complex as his usual work. Which is fine, as he has the tendency to get bogged down in world building, but here I was expecting his usual deep dive into past filled with ghosts, medieval gods and those everyday people who get caught up in the underbelly of (usually his beloved Los Angeles) a city like Paris –which has its own unique past to draw on. Harry is a illustrator, yet there is no real deep dive into who Harry really is, besides, maybe, a wannabe Indiana Jones (which is what the feels like from the start). Even Genevieve comes off a bit paper thin in the development department.
The Sauteurs sort of reminded me of Claire North’s 2015 novel The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August. In that book, we learn Harry August is a ouroboran, a person who lives and dies and then reborn and at around age five, they begin to realize they’ve lived before. Here in The Mills of the Gods, it’s a bit different, it’s just a variation. That the Sauteurs use kids, starting around five and imbued them with the “souls” of fellow Sauteurs then eventually take over the child’s body and live again. Creepy and because it’s 1925, the police cannot connect any dots.
Beyond Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Alice Tolkas are part of narrative (and now that I think about it, probably the template –maybe- that Doctor Who writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss used for Madame Vastra and Jenny Flint, though their adventures happen late in 19th Century). And Powers is not above using real people, as witnessed by 2022 novel My Brother’s Keeper, which featured the Bronte sisters.
The Mills of the Gods was definitely one of Tim Powers' more accessible novels and one I might suggest as a starting point for new readers (My Brother’s Keeper, as well). But to each their own.
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