Horror Book Reviews
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Title: Declare |
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Review of Declare
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 nightmarethat 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 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.
Product Description
- This supernatural suspense thriller crosses several genres--espionage, geopolitics, religion, fantasy. But like the chicken crossing the road, it takes quite a while to get to the other side. En route, Tim Powers covers a lot of territory: Turkey, Armenia, the Saudi Arabian desert, Beirut, London, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow. Andrew Hale, an Oxford lecturer who first entered Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service as an 18-year-old schoolboy, is called back to finish a job that culminated in a deadly mission on Mount Ararat after the end of World War II. Now it's 1963, and cold war politics are behind the decision to activate Hale for another attempt to complete Operation Declare and bring down the Communist government before Moscow can harness the powerful, other-worldly forces concentrated on the summit of the mountain, supposed site of the landing of Noah's ark. James Theodora is the über-spymaster whose internecine rivalry with other branches of the Secret Intelligence Service traps Hale between a rock and a hard place, literally and figuratively. There's plenty of mountain and desert survival stuff here, a plethora of geopolitical and theological history, and a big serving of A Thousand and One Nights, which is Hale's guide to the meteorites, drogue stones, and amonon plant, which figure in this complicated tale. There's a love story, too, and a bizarre twist on the Kim Philby legend that posits both Philby and Hale as the only humans who can tame the powers of the djinns who populate Mount Ararat.
This is an easy book to get lost in, and Powers's many fans will have a field day with it. The rest of us may have a harder time. --Jane Adams
Amazon.com
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Comments for Declare
- Posted on 2008-04-05
Much too Long
This is an exceptionally promising and challenging idea, but the book runs a good 200 pages longer than it needs to. Many of the scenes fail to move the plot forward or develop the characters, which is a real shame -- Powers is a master of atmospheric detail, and he has a talent for making the bizarre seem routine. Powers appears to have done so much research that he felt he had to include every detail he'd unearthed -- I am reluctant to say he's showing off, but there's simply too much here that doesn't advance the story or the ideas.
Score: 2
- Posted on 2008-02-17
An assured work by a master
I've been a fan of Powers' for a long time, but this book caught me off guard. It's the work of a master novelist at the peak of his strength. The supernatural elements are revealed only gradually, and take a back seat to a classic cold war story of love amid shifting allegiances and bureaucratic infighting. Don't get me wrong: it's a heck of a great thriller, but there are hints of Len Deighton, John Le Carre' and Thomas Pynchon in here.
The book is marred by an afterward that tries to argue that only occult forces could have explained the corkscrew trajectories of T.E. Lawrence, Kim Philby and the Communist underground in Nazi-occupied France. The blood-soaked twentieth century exerted a malign gravity on millions of lives without the help of a single angel, evil or otherwise. Powers' facile argument to the contrary does neither him nor the century's victims and villains justice.
Score: 5
- Posted on 2007-11-25
Fantastic Read! A Fusion of Spy and Supernatural!
If you are a fan of both of these genres, then this is the book for you.
Score: 5 - Posted on 2007-09-03
Not Free SF Reader
Other things exist on Mount Ararat than the possibility of some rotting old boat. A complex web of spy organisations and agents have to work out what to do about the world's largest colony of djinn.
Mother Russia has a supernatural guardian that is holding the state together. Kim Philby, and our protagonist, Andrew Hale, are involved in both of these events, as is another agent, a woman named Elena, that both of them fancy, and have fancied.
The spycraft predominates.
Score: 3
- Posted on 2007-02-25
A stunning novel
DECLARE immerses the reader in a mid-twentieth century spy world where a greater, miasmic cause eclipses the Cold War between communism and capitalism. Kim Philby, the real life British turncoat, plays a fascinating and fatalistic role in Tim Powers' globe-trotting adventure aimed at the destruction of an eerie, supernatural foe only a tiny number of human beings know to exist. Philby gets caught in a strange triangle with the complicated Soviet-turned-French spy Elena and the Crown's Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Andrew Hale whose mysterious parentage, links to the Middle East, and psychic endowments destined him from birth to be an operative. It is Hale, ten years younger than Philby, whose story is told most of the time, although Philby, Elena, and cunning old spymaster Theodora also get their opportunities to fill in crucial blanks.
If the main goal of a novel is to draw the reader inexorably into the world it creates, DECLARE is a smashing success. Hale is a man as frail as the rest of us in many respects, yet one who perseveres with bulldog determination to have another go at the Enemy years after his first attempt failed in a frenzy of mind-blowing atrocity. Also a man who loves only one woman despite all odds, Hale doggedly risks everything to reunite with her when the time is ripe. The Philby persona is more difficult to sympathize with. He's a weak, opportunistic man with many a ghost of his own. But he plays an absolutely necessary part in all that unfolds, although some of his vital actions are unwitting ones. Elena, debuting as a tough, atheistic spy in Paris in 1941, later embraces Catholicism (the religion of Hale's youth also) after discovering, in the bowels of the notorious Lubyanka prison, a shocking truth about Russia's "guardian angel." She switches her allegiance away from communism and works with postwar French intelligence, attempting to turn Philby again. Powers' complex and very deliberately structured plot (that jumps backward and forward in time and place) slowly unveils these entangled characters, their histories, their drives, their development. And although the darkly spectral premise underlying DECLARE does boggle the imagination, the story is told so compellingly that one is swept along willingly, even happily.
Many have heaped praise on this unconventional thriller. I can only agree. DECLARE is a richly conceived tale of beliefs, honor, odds, espionage, true love, family, mystery, and suspenseful adventure. Don't let it pass you by.
Score: 5