This is not ‘easy’ fantasy; this is dense, intricate work more akin to ‘hard’ science-fiction in its approach to its subject matter. If you are easily befuddled by sentences such as “This phantom and the sphinx evidently each existed at specific intensities of the time-slowing they’d been experiencing—each of the apparitions only became visible or invisible as a viewer approached or receded from its characteristic point of the time spectrum,” you’re going to find Stress a grind of a read. Stress also defies easy categorization, being at any one time a historical fiction, a fantasy, a vampire novel, or all three at once. It brings in elements of Egyptian, European, and Middle Eastern mythology, resulting in a sometimes-breathtaking literary epic of scope and grandeur.

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