t Delcare by Tim Powers.Perhaps this will explain better than I what I mean by wonderful descriptions and almost “lyrical prose.” ”… From over the shoulder of the mountain, on the side by the Abich I glacier, he heard booming and cracking; and then the earthbound thunder sounded to his right, and he saw that it was the noise of avalanches, galleries and valleys of snow moving down from the heights and separating into fragments then tumbling and exploding into jagged bursts of white against the remote gray sky before they disappeared below his view. tThe cracks and thunders made syllables in the depleted air, but they didn’t seem to be in Arabic. Hale guessed that they were of a language much older, the uncompromised speech of mountain conversing with mountain and lightning and cloud, seeming random only to creatures like himself whose withered verbs and nouns had grown apart from the things they described. tThe music was nearly inaudible to Hale’s physical eardrums, but in his spine he could feel that it was mounting toward some sustained note for which tragedy or grandeur would be nearly appropriate words. tSilently in the vault far overhead the clouds broke, all tall columns of glowing, whirling snow-dust stood now around the black vessel, motionless; Hale reflected that it must be noon, for the shining columns were vertical. The mountain and the lake and the very air were suddenly darker in comparison. tThe columns of light were alive and he fields of their attentions palpably sweeping across the ice and the glacier face and the mountain, momentarily clarifying into sharp focus anything they touched; for just a moment, Hale could see with hallucinatory clarity the woven cuffs of his sleeves. Angels, Hale thought, looking away in shuddering awe. These beings on this mountain are older than the world, and once looked God in the face…” tI’d love to talk about all the wonderful things in this book. Tim Powers is an amazing author and it boggles my mind when I think about how little is known of his writing in this day and age. His command of the English language rivals those of a bygone age where lyrical prose sounded almost poetic and authors paid excruciating attention to the most minute detail in order to paint pictures and convey emotions, noble love, tragedy and desperation with only words from their hearts. Words that conveyed scents, tactile sensations, tastes, sounds and wonderful sights while inspiring fear, hopelessness joy and love as if the reader were standing next to the story’s hero and freezing in the cold with him. Authors like E.A. Poe, A.C. Doyle, E. R. Burroughs and Jules Verne. In Declare Tim Powers reminds me of these greats, but, that’s not all.Declare has a twisted, tangled multi-layered plot that reminds me of Robert Ludlum’s writing in the days of the Parsifal Mosaic and The Holcroft Covenant. This is a tale of cold war espionage and cloak and dagger skullduggery with a touch of the wicked darkness of the Osterman Weekend or The Boys of Brazil. There is action in Declare reminiscent of an Alistair Maclean novel like Where Eagles Dare. On top of this, dark, mysterious themes seep through all of this, like bourbon through sweet yellow cake. Themes that bring darkness and fear like that from the movies Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen. As if this came short of any mark, Powers chose to weave his fantastic tale through actual events in history, without changing them.tIn his own words…tt“In a way, I arrived at the plot for this book by the same method that astronomers use in looking for a new planet—they look for “perturbations,” wobbles, in the orbits of planets they’re aware of, and they calculate mass and position of an unseen planet whose gravitational field could have caused the observed perturbations—and then they turn their telescopes on that part of the sky and search for a gleam. I looked at all the seemingly irrelevant “wobbles” in the lives of these people—Kim Philby, his father, T.E. Lawrence, Guy Burgess—and I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearrange any days of the calendar—and then I tried to figure out what momentous but unrecorded fact could explain them all.” tPowers uses the same formula that won the movie “Titanic” and “The Return of the King” Oscars. By unswerving loyalty to the original book or the historical facts and an a scholarly dedication to keep the details as much as they happened in the book of Philby, Lawrence of Arabia or T.S. Eliot’s lives while waving a wonderful tale of magic, betrayal and hope around them. tKnitting all of these elements together and providing a sense of hope, like the loom of a lighthouse light where the tower is hidden behind the horizon and only the glow of the light brings faint hope for guidance and resurrection, a tragic and heart worming love story that spans decades with the lovers trapped in a cold war that’s older than civilization itself. tIn the early chapters of this book, Powers tapped into the grim, hopeless feeling darkness that lurks throughout George Orwell’s masterwork, 1984. Andrew Hale reminds me as much of Winston Smith as he does Arthur Blair (Orwell) himself in the days of the Spanish Civil war. The later chapters evoke memories of Alistair Maclean’s Where Eagles Dare or The Guns of Naverone. tOrdinarily, so many elements between the covers of a single book may be overwhelming and distracting, like a master-chef preparing Chicken Cordon Blu, the layers are blended together in Declare in perfect unique compliment of each other and they please the pallet beyond what most writers are able to do. Did I like this book? Yes, very much. Right now I rate it 4.5 stars, but I am considering an upgrade to a rare 5 star award. Warnings (as usual, the Devil is in the Details). 1)t As masterful and wonderful as I think this book is, it is written in an cadence and pace that is more like the wonderful novels of John Wyndham, H.G. Wells and George Orwell published in the 1950s and 60s. Though Powers wrote and published his work in 1988, like a chameleon he adapts the style of writing that was prevalent in the era he writes about. He is a modern author and writer and this is a modern novel so there is more dialog and other conventions that mark modern works different from classic ones, but some might find the pace has two speeds, slow and lightning speed. I like the “Sprint and Drift” formula here, as I did in The Hidden Oasis but some may thing it gets too slow in places.2)tThere are no sexual scenes, though the characters do engage in sex. There is very little foul language, but there is a word or two that you wouldn’t utter in front of your mother. Make no mistake--I think these are well managed with the emphasis on story, plot and character development. 3)tThere is plenty of violence in this book. The story is written so smoothly that it is not out of place, not gratuitous or vulgar, but people get shot and damaged in some very creative ways. 4)tThere is a theme here involving biblical elements. This may be one of the few books where I can say, “I” (me) do not believe that these elements will challenge anyone’s faith. I can never tell, so, warning these are here and there is also a blend of supernatural elements. I hope you enjoy this book as much as I did. I would also like to say, that, if you are a fan of audiobooks, that I listened to the narration of Simon Prebble. I usually do not recommend Audiobooks because liking or hating a narrator is generally a personal matter. Narration is a fickle art. Having one good book does nto gauruntee another. Simon Prebble, Tim Powers and Declare hit perfect notes. This book was a superb fit for Prebbles dignified sense of expression and carefully paced timing. I will also say that I liked some of the discriptive paragraphs so much that I bought the Kindle book so I could read them myself. This is just a good read.
Five stars: I want to have this book's babies. If Tim Powers had taken a sabbatical into my subconscious, living like Jane Goodall among the phantoms of my nightly dream life, he couldn't have written a book more perfectly suited for me. Part of me wants to eat his brain and thereby absorb his power. That's how much I enjoyed this book: it makes me wonder what it would be like to eat somebody's brain, and how long I'd have to keep it down before the power transfer became permanent. It's no secret that I think Tim Powers is a mad genius. I've been known to shoot my mouth off fairly frequently about how I think his take on magic is just plain right. So, admittedly, it's not like my biases were working against this book from the outset. And yet. As much as I enjoy his work in general, this is the one that pressed all of my buttons. How could it not?The novel begins with a young spy fleeing a failed secret mission atop Mount Ararat. That mount Ararat, which immediately gets my occult Spidey-sense tingling. From there we follow Andrew Hale on a globe-spanning adventure that effortlessly weaves Cold War history, heartbroken spies, magic, Kim Philby, the Dead Sea Scrolls, djinn, MI6, Lawrence of Arabia, The Thousand and One Nights, the Brandenburg Gate, the Special Operations Executive, and Noah's Ark. Noah's freakin' Ark, people! But wait, there's more. Because as if weaving all of that into a surprisingly plausible secret history isn't by itself a tour de force, Powers pulls it off in the form of a love letter to John LeCarre novels. (Damn, man. What else? Were you riding a unicycle and juggling flaming clubs while you wrote this?) Stylistically, this novel differs a bit from Powers's other outings because this is straight-up espionage literature of the stale beer variety. Powers, an avowed LeCarre fan, knows what he's doing in this arena. Our hero, Hale, is the son of a disgraced nun, the identity of his father a mystery. At every year's end he suffers nightmares of a vast power thrashing in troubled sleep beneath the desert while the stars wheel overhead. He was baptized in the Jordan river, and that makes him the key to the most secret, longest-running operation in the history of British Intelligence. At age 7, he becomes an unwitting agent of DECLARE.Hale is an imperfect hero. He isn't suave, he isn't endowed with an improbable surfeit of competence, he isn't the toughest SOB in the room. But he's smart, and sometimes -- at the very highest-stakes table of the Great Game -- that's just enough to get by. Most of all, he's a lonely, brokenhearted man suffering from, if not exactly unrequited love, frustrated and unfulfilled love. More Smiley than Bond, his heart has only ever belonged to one woman: Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga. They met in occupied Paris, where she was Et Cetera, or Elena, and he Lot, or Marcel. Together they spent several months hiding from the Gestapo, moving from flat to flat, all the while serving a network of Soviet agents (she with the fervor of a true believer, he as a double agent). They were young together, feared for their lives together, huddled together against malevolent magics older than mankind. And then their mission(s) ended. Elena was recalled to Moscow (and almost certain execution), while Hale was recalled to England. When he fails to convince her to come west with him rather than go east to an uncertain fate, he knows he will almost certainly never see her again. But it's too late for him. How, given everything they'd experienced together, could he possibly love anybody else? Hale's devotion to Elena is lovely and touching, an honest portrait of the complex currents of the human heart. He is broken and stunted by the circumstances of his life, unable to move beyond his brief relationship with Elena. This rang very, very true to me.They do meet again, of course. In Berlin in 1945, and on Mount Ararat a few years later, and in Beirut some years after that.The fates of Hale and Elena are closely intertwined with that of the third player in these secret machinations: none other than Kim Philby, the most notorious member of the "Cambridge Five" spy ring. And, for my money, this is where Powers's craftsmanship shines. He's playing a game throughout Declare, weaving a supernatural explanation to the many strange (and they are strange) facts surrounding Philby's life. He somehow manages this without ever changing or ignoring the documented facts. Powers outlines all the pieces of this puzzle in an extensive and fascinating author's note. It's that note, as much as anything else, that makes me want to consume his mind.Powers's djinn -- or are they fallen angels? -- are truly alien and truly scary. Shit gets real when they come on stage. This novel is very well suited to my tastes, but it isn't immune to criticism. Others don't care for Declare as much as I do, and understandably so. For one thing, the storytelling is very nonlinear, jumping from 1948 to 1963 to 1941 and back to 1963. . . It jumps around enough that I wouldn't be surprised if it turned some people off. It might also be guilty of hiding the football, constantly referring to things known to the POV characters without revealing them to the reader. It does take about half the book before the reader learns just what happened on Mount Ararat, and why. I know people who found that extremely irritating. I can't blame them. For me, personally, the hints were so yummy that I didn't mind waiting for the big reveals later in the book -- and, to my opinion, the revelations are never a letdown. YMMV. It's also fair to say that the rivalry between Hale and Philby as they vie for Elena C-B's affection isn't particularly enlightened. They gamble for the right to pursue her hand, but they never stop to consider the lady's preferences. Again, I can see how that could color readers' perceptions of the characters. I wasn't quite so bothered by this, because it's quite clear that Hale is truly in love with Elena and that Philby is, quite frankly, a selfish, backstabbing, smarmy, lying, traitorous, asshat. Of course he'd be the kind of guy to see her as a game piece, a symbol of the clashing ideologies behind DECLARE, another object to be won. Hale gambles with him because -- seriously -- who in his right mind would want to see the love of his life accosted by Kim Philby? So yeah. While it may not be a perfect book, it's as damn close to perfect for this reader as I'm likely to find.Anchors aweigh, my dear boy.
What do You think about Declare (2002)?
The author of this book calls himself a writer or 'speculative fiction,' an interesting term that encompasses fiction, science fiction, fantasy and a smattering of history. He's one of my husband's favorite authors, and this book is my husband's current favorite by this author. I'm not much of a fantasy or sci-fi fan, but this book really seems to have something for everyone, and it's well written to boot. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did.From a very young age, Andrew Hale knows that he's going to be serving the British crown in some way, and in 1941 he's called on by the British SOE to spy on the communist resistance in Paris by joining the communist party at Oxford where he is studying, then allowing himself to be recruited and trained as a telegraphist. These first pivotal steps, along with the key people he comes into contact with as he executes this assignment, are the basis for greater and more significant adventures over the following 20+ years.The author starts out with a short but thunderous first chapter, then slowly eases into the backstory, as well as the mayhem and fantasy/sci-fi as the book progresses. It's the perfect blend for someone like me who doesn't necessarily enjoy fantasy fiction...there was enough espionage to get me hooked and believing in the characters. And, by the time the hyper-reality is full blown, I was so involved with the story I did't find it at all annoying.
—Evelyn
Declare is both a spy novel about WWII and the Cold War and a fantasy, and the two elements intertwine surprisingly well. The plot is intricate and filled with careful manipulation, violence, shifting loyalties, and even romance. The magic was not flashy or frivolous, but dangerous, poorly understood, and incredibly eerie. The deadly, enigmatic djinn, also referred to as fallen angels, are at the heart of a secret Cold War, fought through the schemes and many-layered betrayals of the British, French and Soviet spies. The level of period detail and meticulous scenery is amazing, and the djinn magic was deeply unsettling. I feel like it’s obvious that a tremendous amount of work went into the creation of this novel, and I think it definitely paid off in the end. It’s not exactly light reading, but I think that this richly imagined historical fantasy is well worth the time and effort.
—Allie
I've liked everything of Powers' I've read, but in DECLARE his mixture of wit, world-building, and exhaustive erudition really sings. Also, the language! Big, long, chewy sentence after big, long, chewy sentence, yet maintaining flawless pace. In a few moments (e.g. Philby's fox), the backstory becomes a touch baroque, but since this is a product of Powers' gravitational approach to history—finding invisible causes to make sense of too-weird-for-fiction events—I can't exactly fault him for that. The narrative's reification of myth, faith, and sacrament unsettles and spins, which might be all to the best as it occasions reflection on what role these phenomena (maybe not the right word?) actually play in our lives. It felt strange and bracing, in an all-old's-new-again sort of way, to see Christian sacraments directly affect the supernatural world of the book, which thus refigures Christianity and Islam as fantastical setting elements. (Though it's possible we're in a Bultmann zone here—we're seeing ways Christian and Muslim ritual have preserved older magical traditions. I don't remember much textual support for that position in the novel.) While I'm uncertain about the novel's handling of religion, Powers does evoke the characters' guilt, awe, sin, and desire for confession / amendment, maybe putting at odds the ritual power of external events with their internal, existential significance. Maybe.Powers' determination that his magical constructs are part of supernature, rather than obscure nature, may be bracing with the more "scientific" magic common in, say, epic fantasies these days. (Though, if it matters, the "magic system" here is well-thought-out and internally consistent.) The supernatural stuff in this book really does defy any ad-hoc scientific explanation my mind can supply, which pushes us deeply into mysterium tremens et fascinans territory.If you like spies, or secret worlds, this book deserves your time.
—Max
