Declare
by Tim Powers
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As a young double agent infiltrating the Soviet spy network in Nazi-occupied Paris, Andrew Hale finds himself caught up in a secret, even more ruthless war. Two decades later, in 1963, he will be forced to confront again the nightmare that has haunted his adult life: a lethal unfinished operation code-named Declare. From the corridors of Whitehall to the Arabian desert, from post-war Berlin to the streets of Cold War Moscow, Hale's desperate quest draws him into international politics and show more gritty espionage tradecraft -- and inexorably drives Hale, the fiery and beautiful Communist agent Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga, and Kim Philby, mysterious traitor to the British cause, to a deadly confrontation on the high glaciers of Mount Ararat, in the very shadow of the fabulous and perilous Ark. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
AlanPoulter There is a shared delight in mixing Cold War paranoia and the mystical/fantastic in these two novels.
30
paradoxosalpha Both are bulky, character-oriented novels rooted in the socio-political frames of particular periods; both are self-consciously English; both have emotional depth; both mix in some real historical persons as characters; both introduce their central supernatural elements in a gradual manner; and in both cases those elements are anchored in archaic intelligences and their complex relations with humanity. I would even compare the narrative role that Powers assigns to T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") to that occupied by the Raven King in Clarke's book. And both Powers and Clarke are performing a certain level of transcendent pastiche: adding magic to the LeCarre spy thriller on the one hand and to the Austen saga of realist satire on the other. Powers gets more points for fidelity to history, Clarke for verisimilitude of magic.
24
Member Reviews
I think this might actually be Tim Powers' best book. It's got secret history, secret agencies, strange magic, strange tech, all fitted neatly and carefully around real history and real people, it's also got gallons of Catholcism sloshing around, and as someone raised Catholic it's actually great to see it being used in the context of an epic slam bang supernatural spy adventure instead of just making guilty and miserable people feel even more guilty and miserable.
Dean Koontz is quoted on the cover of this paperback edition as naming this book a ‘tour de force’. That is just about right.
The book is a mix of Le Carre (‘The Perfect Spy’ springs to mind as well as his earlier Cold War spy thrillers) with quasi-Lovecraftian cosmic horror and it even offers homage to Alistair Maclean towards the end.
But it is also very distinctively Tim Powers. Themes of conspiracy, secrecy, ruthlessness and betrayal are all there as we might expect. It gives nothing away to say that Kim Philby plays a major role in the story.
One has to wonder whether Powers has a paranoid streak in his private life, or has suffered some form of betrayal of trust that drives his work – or is simply a very imaginative miner show more of a rich literary vein.
Nearly every chapter is preceded by a quotation from Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Kim’ so we are in ‘Great Game’ territory, the central conceit being a struggle between empires through agencies that are beyond secret and exceptionally ruthless in their greater cause. This is classic Powers’ territory.
In this sense, it is rather old-fashioned and is all the better for it. British imperial gentry and public schoolboys as well as tormented Catholics (shades of Graham Greene who also wrote early thrillers are here) are the heroes, with the Americans and the French tagging along for the ride.
On the other side, Stalin’s Soviet Union (and that of his decaying successors) are mere overlay to an earlier Mother Russia whose guardian ‘angel’ is at the centre of the plot (again, no spoilers).
So, it is a politically and culturally conservative book, filled with the nostalgia of all British Atlanticists (of which I am not one) who continue with the pretence that Britain matters and has not degenerated into a rather wealthier Yugoslavia of small nations on the edge of a greater empire.
The book is thus massively entertaining nonsense, by a master of genre fiction, both on grounds of content and ideology but it should equally be lapped up by anyone who lives vicariously through the adventure novel or who seeks the fantastic.
It is certainly rare to see two genres as radically opposed as cosmic horror and the spy thriller merged with such effect but Powers succeeds beyond all expectations.
His earlier ‘Three Days to Never’ frustrated us by being a compulsive read that then degenerated into incomprehensibility. Do not fail to read his appendix about how he came to his conceit but only after reading the book to the end.
This book reverses that 'failing'. It starts with an incomprehensibility that expands into a finely crafted tale of geo-politics and horror (no spoilers here) in which everything is ultimately explained.
Perhaps the only significant criticism is that Powers appears to be so entranced with his own in-depth research that some incidents, especially those set in Paris in wartime, might be regarded as over-lengthy at a time so much of the story cannot yet be understood.
Perhaps he wants you to keep the book for reading a second time and I suspect you might keep it in your library (like his still remarkable ‘The Anubis Gates’) for just that reason. The research that he has put into getting each scene ‘right’ is quite remarkable.
In other words, do not be put off by his determination to be precise and accurate about ambience – whether of Paris, wartime London, post-war Berlin or Cold War Kuwait – because you will lose out on a rollicking adventure story that might even send a chill down the spine. show less
The book is a mix of Le Carre (‘The Perfect Spy’ springs to mind as well as his earlier Cold War spy thrillers) with quasi-Lovecraftian cosmic horror and it even offers homage to Alistair Maclean towards the end.
But it is also very distinctively Tim Powers. Themes of conspiracy, secrecy, ruthlessness and betrayal are all there as we might expect. It gives nothing away to say that Kim Philby plays a major role in the story.
One has to wonder whether Powers has a paranoid streak in his private life, or has suffered some form of betrayal of trust that drives his work – or is simply a very imaginative miner show more of a rich literary vein.
Nearly every chapter is preceded by a quotation from Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Kim’ so we are in ‘Great Game’ territory, the central conceit being a struggle between empires through agencies that are beyond secret and exceptionally ruthless in their greater cause. This is classic Powers’ territory.
In this sense, it is rather old-fashioned and is all the better for it. British imperial gentry and public schoolboys as well as tormented Catholics (shades of Graham Greene who also wrote early thrillers are here) are the heroes, with the Americans and the French tagging along for the ride.
On the other side, Stalin’s Soviet Union (and that of his decaying successors) are mere overlay to an earlier Mother Russia whose guardian ‘angel’ is at the centre of the plot (again, no spoilers).
So, it is a politically and culturally conservative book, filled with the nostalgia of all British Atlanticists (of which I am not one) who continue with the pretence that Britain matters and has not degenerated into a rather wealthier Yugoslavia of small nations on the edge of a greater empire.
The book is thus massively entertaining nonsense, by a master of genre fiction, both on grounds of content and ideology but it should equally be lapped up by anyone who lives vicariously through the adventure novel or who seeks the fantastic.
It is certainly rare to see two genres as radically opposed as cosmic horror and the spy thriller merged with such effect but Powers succeeds beyond all expectations.
His earlier ‘Three Days to Never’ frustrated us by being a compulsive read that then degenerated into incomprehensibility. Do not fail to read his appendix about how he came to his conceit but only after reading the book to the end.
This book reverses that 'failing'. It starts with an incomprehensibility that expands into a finely crafted tale of geo-politics and horror (no spoilers here) in which everything is ultimately explained.
Perhaps the only significant criticism is that Powers appears to be so entranced with his own in-depth research that some incidents, especially those set in Paris in wartime, might be regarded as over-lengthy at a time so much of the story cannot yet be understood.
Perhaps he wants you to keep the book for reading a second time and I suspect you might keep it in your library (like his still remarkable ‘The Anubis Gates’) for just that reason. The research that he has put into getting each scene ‘right’ is quite remarkable.
In other words, do not be put off by his determination to be precise and accurate about ambience – whether of Paris, wartime London, post-war Berlin or Cold War Kuwait – because you will lose out on a rollicking adventure story that might even send a chill down the spine. show less
I came to Tim Powers' Declare on the strength of a friend's recommendation, and also Charles Stross' comparison to his own work in The Atrocity Archives. Although the subject matter of espionage plus supernatural elements was certainly similar to Stross' "Laundry" novels, I was surprised to find myself comparing Declare to a very different, and altogether more popular book: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Both are bulky, character-oriented novels rooted in the socio-political frames of particular periods; both are self-consciously English; both have emotional depth; both mix in some real historical persons as characters; both introduce their central supernatural elements in a gradual manner; and in both cases those show more elements are anchored in archaic intelligences and their complex relations with humanity. I would even compare the narrative role that Powers assigns to T.E. Lawrence ("of Arabia") to that occupied by the Raven King in Clarke's book. And both Powers and Clarke are performing a comparable sort of transcendent pastiche: adding magic to the LeCarre spy thriller on the one hand and to the Austen saga of realist satire on the other. Powers gets more points for fidelity to history, Clarke for verisimilitude of magic.
Comparisons aside, I did very much enjoy Declare. It was not a flawless book. There was a certain attribution of supernatural efficacy to Christian piety and sacraments that was never properly justified, and I occasionally found a sentence in laughable need of easy repair. (An example of both from p. 486: "He opened his mouth to speak the first words of the Our Father, but realized that he had forgotten them.") But there is a healthy and profitable use of dramatic irony -- attentive readers can stay a half-step ahead of the central characters -- and Powers manages to instill a real numinosity into the higher orders of espionage that he invents for World War II and the Cold War. The psychology of double-agency is a long-standing interest of mine, and Powers makes it central to his novel in a way that I appreciated. The recruitment and induction of spies ("agent-runners") is presented through an explicitly initiatory framework that should be accessible and engaging to those who share those interests with me as well. show less
Comparisons aside, I did very much enjoy Declare. It was not a flawless book. There was a certain attribution of supernatural efficacy to Christian piety and sacraments that was never properly justified, and I occasionally found a sentence in laughable need of easy repair. (An example of both from p. 486: "He opened his mouth to speak the first words of the Our Father, but realized that he had forgotten them.") But there is a healthy and profitable use of dramatic irony -- attentive readers can stay a half-step ahead of the central characters -- and Powers manages to instill a real numinosity into the higher orders of espionage that he invents for World War II and the Cold War. The psychology of double-agency is a long-standing interest of mine, and Powers makes it central to his novel in a way that I appreciated. The recruitment and induction of spies ("agent-runners") is presented through an explicitly initiatory framework that should be accessible and engaging to those who share those interests with me as well. show less
Whenever I recommend this to people, I always tell them it's three parts of every WWII era spy novel, two parts Arabian Nights, one part Lovecraft, and a tiny dab of LSD to help make everything make sense. Tm Powers has an uncanny ability to maneuver a tiny sailboat of a book between the vicious reefs of disparate tropes with a poise that leaves the reader stunned. Very highly recommended.
This is one of those book where the less you know about it, the better it is, so I recommend reading it without reading reviews first.
But if you really want to know what I thought.. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It starts as a very convincing WWII/Cold War spy novel, and for the first quarter of the book it could easily be a Le Carre novel. However, some things are a little bit out of place, and Andrew Hale, the main character, slowly comes to realize that he is dealing with ancient magic.
I often don't like magical realism, because few authors can gracefully let magic intrude into the real world. However, in this book, it is totally convincing. The world of Cold War espionage is so secretive, so self-important, that magic fits in show more perfectly. I was even more delighted to get to the author's afterward and realize that many of the characters in this book are actual historical figures whose biographies have some unexplained episodes in them, and magic is a wonderful solution to the questions left by the historical record.
I listened to the audiobook, and Simon Prebble is the perfect narrator for this book. show less
But if you really want to know what I thought.. I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It starts as a very convincing WWII/Cold War spy novel, and for the first quarter of the book it could easily be a Le Carre novel. However, some things are a little bit out of place, and Andrew Hale, the main character, slowly comes to realize that he is dealing with ancient magic.
I often don't like magical realism, because few authors can gracefully let magic intrude into the real world. However, in this book, it is totally convincing. The world of Cold War espionage is so secretive, so self-important, that magic fits in show more perfectly. I was even more delighted to get to the author's afterward and realize that many of the characters in this book are actual historical figures whose biographies have some unexplained episodes in them, and magic is a wonderful solution to the questions left by the historical record.
I listened to the audiobook, and Simon Prebble is the perfect narrator for this book. show less
My standard tag line for this is that it's a cross between John Le Carré and Charles Williams.
Many supernatural secret histories these days use a Lovecraftian model for their esoteric side: this one uses the jinni of the Arabian Nights and the tales of Suleiman bin Daoud (much as Williams had used Suleiman as the background for Many Dimensions). Powers plays the eminently fair (but constraining) game of providing an exoteric narrative which is that of received history: this forces his narrative into a slightly broken-backed, episodic, shape -- episodes have to jump from the twenties through World War II to the Cold War and finally to the late Cold War -- but it's well-crafted and engaging, with fine characterization.
The best Powers show more I've read: if not quite at a masterpiece level, then head and shoulders above most genre works. show less
Many supernatural secret histories these days use a Lovecraftian model for their esoteric side: this one uses the jinni of the Arabian Nights and the tales of Suleiman bin Daoud (much as Williams had used Suleiman as the background for Many Dimensions). Powers plays the eminently fair (but constraining) game of providing an exoteric narrative which is that of received history: this forces his narrative into a slightly broken-backed, episodic, shape -- episodes have to jump from the twenties through World War II to the Cold War and finally to the late Cold War -- but it's well-crafted and engaging, with fine characterization.
The best Powers show more I've read: if not quite at a masterpiece level, then head and shoulders above most genre works. show less
This was a tough haul for me. This was on my "currently reading" pile for the entire summer, because I kept finding other things (mostly non-fiction) to read instead. I've enjoyed Powers in the past, and will return to him in the future but I can't give this a strong recommendation. It's Powers doing his secret history legerdemain in the style of John LeCarre. The problem is that over 300 pages of WWII and Cold War backstabbing, skullduggery, and gloom have to pass before the secret history part really starts to pay off. When it does, it happens in frequent info-dumps of backstory. In an epilogue, Powers describes the research he did in developing the novel and working out alternate explanations for real world events. Apparently he show more followed the rule "if it was hard to write, it should be hard to read, gosh darn it!" Having paid my dues, I was happy to rewarded with something happening in the last quarter of the story, but I think I'm still owed some change. show less
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- Original title
- Declare
- Original publication date
- 2000
- People/Characters
- Andrew Hale; Kim Philby; Claude Cassagnac; Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga; Harold Macmillan; Jimmie Theodora
- Important places
- Mount Ararat; England, UK; Paris, France; Brandenburg Gate, Berlin, Germany; Rub' al Khali (the Empty Quarter)
- Important events
- World War II (1939 | 1945); World War II, German Occupation of France (1940 | 1944); Cold War
- Epigraph
- Birthdays? yes, in a general way:
For the most if not for the best of men:
You were born -- I suppose -- on a certain day:
So was I: or perhaps in the night: what then?
Only this: or at least, if more,
You ... (show all)must know, not think it, and learn, not speak:
There is truth to be found on the unknown shore,
And many will find what few would seek.
- J. K. Stephen, inaccurately quoted in a letter from St. John Philby to his son, Kim Philby, March 15, 1932
Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Declare, if thou hast understanding.
- Job 38:4 - First words
- The young captain's hands were sticky with blood on the steering wheel as he cautiously backed the jeep in a tight turn off the rutted mud track onto a patch of level snow that shone in the intermittent moonlight on the edge ... (show all)of the gorge, and then his left hand seemed to freeze onto the gear-shift knob after he reached down to clank the lever up into first gear. (prologue)
From the telephone a man's accentless voice said, "Here's a list: Chaucer...Malory..." - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)They were a peculiar-looking couple - the man in the clownish overcoat, who had fired the shot that would one day topple the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and the woman dressed in black like a Spanish duena, who would at long last become his wife - but they attracted no attention at all as they strolled away hand-in-hand past the southernmost corner of the Kremlin Wall and on to the embankments of the Moskva River.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics collapsed three and a half years later, in December of 1991; Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as Soviet President on Christmas Day. (afterword) - Blurbers
- Koontz, Dean; Gibson, William; Mieville, China
- Original language
- English
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