Tim Powers,
Declare
(Subterranean Press, 2000;
Morrow/Avon, 2001)
I wish I could come up with a witty and pithy phrase to describe Tim Powers' new novel, but unfortunately for me, the author himself has already done so: Tradecraft meets Lovecraft. Declare With all due respect to 1992's wonderful Last Call , this is Powers' most cohesive and well-written book since The Stress of Her Regard , and Declare shares much in common with that novel. Instead of vampires, we have djinn straight out of The Arabian Nights ; instead of the Romantic poets, the attentions of these creatures are focused on Cold War spies. Declare also portrays a high-altitude confrontation with the supernatural; here, it takes place on Mount Ararat instead of in the Alps. To the average reader, Soviet double agent Kim Philby may not be as familiar as Lord Byron or Percy Shelley, but Powers plays by his customary set of rules in Declare : in portraying historical events, he sticks strictly to the known facts, but gives them a slight ... tweak. Did upperclass Englishman Philby betray his country out of misguided idealism, or were his reasons more peculiar ? Was Stalin simply a madman, or did his seemingly insane purges of his own intelligence agencies have some arcane purpose? How | |
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