I’ve been a fan of Tim Powers’ books for a while now so when I saw Declare going cheap a little while back I snapped it up. But I couldn't get into it. I was puzzled. I first read The Anubis Gates - a story involving magical time travel to London in the year 1810 and pre-destination paradoxes and I was hooked.
I followed that up with the Fault Lines series: Last Call (mystical card games and the competition to become the spiritual king of the American west), Expiration Date (the ghost of Edison possesses a young boy and flees from those who would consume him in a bid for immortality) and Earthquake Weather which ties both the previous books together. I liked these quite a bit too. And last was Three Days To Never involving mystical time travel, Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein. Which was pretty awesome.
So I was understandably confused when I had such a hard time getting into Declare. It’s about a retired spy, recalled to active duty decades after World War II, during the 60s and the Cold War. It jumps between his exploits in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1941 and his return to duty in 1963. And it’s interesting but it just didn’t grab me.
Until I read the news over the last week. The death of an MI6 employee in London got me thinking about the Great Game a lot more. And the more I thought about espionage, the more interested I got into going back to the novel. And when I pushed ahead just a little more, the novel hooked me.
Powers’ usual use of the occult in his stories finally showed itself as the mysterious Operation Declare is hinted at involving Djinn, a mysterious force on top of Mount Ararat and an attempt to counter the Soviet’s move to control that force. And I can’t wait to find out what happens next. I’m only 200 pages into it and there’s a long way to go, but I’m relieved my faith in Powers books is restored, and newly interested also in next year’s Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides, which is loosely based on one of Powers older novels.
I followed that up with the Fault Lines series: Last Call (mystical card games and the competition to become the spiritual king of the American west), Expiration Date (the ghost of Edison possesses a young boy and flees from those who would consume him in a bid for immortality) and Earthquake Weather which ties both the previous books together. I liked these quite a bit too. And last was Three Days To Never involving mystical time travel, Charlie Chaplin and Albert Einstein. Which was pretty awesome.
So I was understandably confused when I had such a hard time getting into Declare. It’s about a retired spy, recalled to active duty decades after World War II, during the 60s and the Cold War. It jumps between his exploits in Nazi-occupied Paris in 1941 and his return to duty in 1963. And it’s interesting but it just didn’t grab me.
Until I read the news over the last week. The death of an MI6 employee in London got me thinking about the Great Game a lot more. And the more I thought about espionage, the more interested I got into going back to the novel. And when I pushed ahead just a little more, the novel hooked me.
Powers’ usual use of the occult in his stories finally showed itself as the mysterious Operation Declare is hinted at involving Djinn, a mysterious force on top of Mount Ararat and an attempt to counter the Soviet’s move to control that force. And I can’t wait to find out what happens next. I’m only 200 pages into it and there’s a long way to go, but I’m relieved my faith in Powers books is restored, and newly interested also in next year’s Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides, which is loosely based on one of Powers older novels.
I'm sure it won't take me long to finish the book now that I'm caught up in it again and I'll post about it again then.
No comments:
Post a Comment