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Loading... Declareby Tim Powers
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.  lewispike | Oct 26, 2009 |  Odd, like all Powers' books. A spy story, with genies (djinn). As a concept, that didn't work very well for me, not nearly as well as his Romantic poets with vampires, or the gangsters, poker and fisher king cross.While I was reading I had that song The Freshmen, by Verve something, running in my head. I think because I heard it just before I began the book, and that line about "his face was stiff with tears" somehow seemed to fit into the song, right meter and everything.The British intelligence service was rather nasty. Killing Cassagnac! Good thing the Russians were so much worse. . . (  ) krisiti | Jul 1, 2009 | Winner of World Fantasy Award; a perfect blend of espionage novel, historical fiction, and dark fantasy, this book tells the tale of three spies involvement over 60 years in trying to tame and/or destroy creatures known variously as djinn and fallen angels. Heavy detail on British and Soviet military operations and espionage activities from 1920-1964. Explicit violence, language, sexual situations (non-explicit), and heavy drinking. chosler | Jan 13, 2009 | I am an enormous fan of Tim Powers, so understand that when I say this is not my favorite work of his, I still recommend it whole-heartedly. Declare has a heavier feeling that most of Powers' other books, and at times can get a little bogged down. However, as other reviewers have noted, it is a curiously haunting book, staying with you long after you put it down, and popping up in your mind when you least expect it. The story is not straightforward, jumping around a bit chronologically, and thus it improves on the second and third readings when you are better able to integrate the full storyline. One of the beautiful things that Powers does is infuse the everyday world with systems of magic that are so consistently and richly developed that they seem like they are truth viewed from a different angle. This book is no exception as he explores a secret or alternate history of the Cold War in which Mount Ararat, the ark, and djinn are bigger factors in the struggle of nations than nuclear arms. (  )1  tanenbaum | Jan 12, 2009 | Slow, slow going. But eventually I was so drawn in that I was invested in what happened next. I read the first half in 2 months and the last half in a week. (  ) ansate | Jul 14, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Book Description (ISBN 0380976528, Hardcover)There are histories beneath history. Tim Powers, one of the most brilliant and audacious talents in contemporary fiction, casts an eerie light on the terrible events that made the twentieth century and reveals what the Cold War was really about.Declare After a ten-year hiatus, British academic Andrew Hale is abruptly called back into the Great Game by a terse, cryptic telephone message. Born to "the trade" and recruited at the age of seven by a most secret Secret Service, Hale, in 1963, is forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare. Two decades earlier, as a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Hale first encountered the incomprehensible rhythms of an invisible world. And from that moment on nothing was ever safe and knowable again. There also, his life became eternally linked with two others' lives that would recurrently intersect his at its most dangerous junctures: his "comrade operative," the fiery and beautiful Communist agent Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga, the object of Hale's undying love, and Kim Philby, the mysterious traitor to the British cause...and perhaps to all humanity. Together they form an unlikely trimuvirate with one shared destiny: Declare. But the Great Game is greater and far more terrible than Andrew Hale ever imagined. There is another, larger war raging unseen all around him, a cataclysmic secret conflict masked by a "Cold War" of national ideologies. And it is drawing Hale, Elena, and Philby inexorably toward world-shattering consequences on a Biblical mountain in the Middle East...and to a hideous feast of broken minds, destroyed lives, and devoured souls. The remarkable imagination of Tim Powers has wedded John le Carré with Clive Barker to create something unlike anything previously contained between book covers. A sweeping epic adventure, a love story, a revelation, a nightmare, it is our past and our world as something other...Declare! (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:01 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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Wikipedia in English (1)
Apparently Powers started research Kim Philby, who had an interesting enough life (he was a double agent for the NKVD/KGB working inside the British Security Services (SIS and MI6)). There are, apparently, strange inconsistencies and odd behaviour (I'm sure there would be in anyone's life, particularly if he's a double agent). Powers, however, creates a world of djinn, magic and old ones that quite neatly fit into the gaps in a worryingly coherent fashion.
The result? Secret agencies working to recruit, control, or kill djinn, angels and the like, within their own national spy agencies. And if you like the Lovecraftian side of things, you'll love the way it all fits together.
The historical details are all correct - he challenged himself not to change them and STILL produce the book - but it doesn't feel forced at any point although it does jump around in time more than a little, which takes a bit of getting used to.
All in all an excellent read. (