Tim Powers is a writer who has a single template for most of his books:
He takes on a few historical characters and events of which not everything is known,
then fills in the gaps with his own imagination, though never deviating from the facts, stringing it all together into a coherent plot.
Repetitive? No.
Boring? Never!
As with all masters, it is the execution of the receipe that matters.
Powers' plots are marvellous: twisting and turning, sparking off new insights and wonders,
revealed bit by bit, never too fast, never too slow, to keep the reader on edge and finally coming down to a satisfying whole.
Many writers strive to write as such, but their stories end up tasting forced and artificial,
while Powers somehow cuts his raw stones into gems.
Of cousre plot is not everything. Be it the bone of the story, Powers supplements it with flesh in the form of sweet prose and a good sense of detail. From Dinner at Deviant's Palace:
Though continuing to behave like a scared young man in unfamiliar surroundings, Rivas watched with concealed amusement the specialized dance of an expert pickpocket - strangely insectlike in its series of hesitant touches culminating in a darting garb, the whole body spring-poised for the possible necessity of flight - and the indolent progress of a somewhat overripe prostitute who had come to terms with the consequences of time and knew how to make the most of shadows and selectively revealing clothes. It occurred to Rivas that he was, at the moment, just as much a web-spinner, just as much a patient angler, as either of them.
In most of his stories magic is present, though not of the standard kind.
Almost all fantasy books employ magic to some degree, but many do not get beyond "I wave my wand and cast a spell of fire".
In Powers' books there are no spells.
Magical phenomena that manifest themselves almost like forces of nature, hovering in the background and suddenly, alarmingly manifesting themselves.
They are supernatural yet hauntingly believable, like they could very well work in some kind of alternate reality.
They are always original and send chills down your spine.
From Declare:
Their thoughts are kinectic macroscopic events, wind and fire and sandstorms, gross and literal. What the djinn imagine is done; for them to imagine it is to have done it, and for them to be reminded of it is for them to do it again. Their thoughts are *things*, things in motion, and their memories are literal things too, preserved for potential reference - wedding rings and gold teeth looted from graves, and bones in the sand, and scorch-marks on floors, all ready to spring into renewed activity again at a reminder. To impose a memory-shape onto their physical makeup is to forcibly impose an experience - which, in the case of a Shihah meteorite's imprint, is death.
Powers' best known books are The Anubis Gates, On Stranger Tides and Declare, but he wrote several more novels, novellas, short stories, chapbooks and even cookbooks. Read more at http://www.theworksoftimpowers.com/.