Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
William Morrow (2001), Edition: 1st ed, Hardcover
Description
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.… (more)
User reviews
LibraryThing member paradoxosalpha
I came to Tim Powers' Declare on the strength of a friend's recommendation, and also Charle's 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
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.
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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 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.
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LibraryThing member RandyStafford
My reactions to reading this novel in 2002.
A very accomplished novel and now, of the Powers' I've read, my favorite.
Powers combines the most impressive amount of research and diversity of elements of any of his novels: the minutiae of Cold War espionage (mostly the British and Russian intelligence
There are some typical Powers techniques and themes.
Body swapping of a sort shows up in the confused identities protagonist Andrew Hale experiences when he meets his half-brother, Kim Philby, after the latter has escaped to Moscow. This notion also shows up with the notion of split identities and doubles throughout the book: Kim Philby's ability to be in two places at once until Andrew is born when Kim is ten; John Philby being confused, as an infant, with another child (as usual, when Powers includes real people in his novels, the given details of their lives are drawn from actual histories and biographies -- here, in the unusual step of having an afterword, he explicitly states where many of the details about Philby's life came from), the suppression of identity often felt when in the presence of the djinn, particularly when Hale and Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga (her last name translates into English as Ashbless so another installment is added to Powers' and James Blaylock's joint myth of the Ashbless family) are psychically merged with the djinn during the 1948 expedition to Ararat. Guy Burgess is also said to have killed a double of his.
Powers once again relies on analogies of electricity and general physics to rationalize his magic. The djinn of Mount Ararat are said, because of the presence of anchor stones, to be in a "grounded state". Some djinn inhabit the Heaviside Layer so important in bouncing radio signals around. The importance of a direction of rotation is also here as in Power's Expiration Date.
I liked the notion that the djinn expressed thought as a marcoscopic kinetic animation of surrounding matter -- and the symmetrical idea of imposing thought and experience on them with matter associated with their fellow djinn. I wouldn't classify anything by Powers since his Dinner at the Deviant's Palace as sf -- and neither would he, but he tries very hard to suspend disbelief in his magical worlds by using concepts like symmetry from physics as well as external trappings like the language of electricity. If his magic is not rationalized into sf, associations with the language of rational science is certainly used.
Once again, the chapter epigraphs, here mainly drawn from Gilgamesh and, especially, Rudyard Kipling's Kim (the source of Kim Philby's first name) are very appropriate. When the young Andrew Hale first hears the ritualistic phrases of the secret spy network that exists in the British Special Operations Executive (particularly the wonderful phrase, drawn from Arab myth, "O fish, are you constant to the covenant?", we immediately sense something very important even if Hale doesn't. It reminded me of Scott Crane's first card game on Lake Mead in Last Call when he is reminded that his hand has been assumed. Andrew Hale being raised for great purposes and manipulated and threatened by outside forces reminded me of Kootie in Expiration Date.
Declare also involves family matters, specifically the revelation (not really a surprise to me) that Philby and Hale are half-brothers. (I liked the split of a unified personality into, respectively, an obsession with family and, in Hale, a concern for duty and loyalty). However, in Declare it is the relationship between Hale and Elena and questions of faith, not the exorcism of spirits, that is addressed in the epilogue after the djinn of Mount Ararat have been killed:
In the unusual structure of this novel, which bounces from the 1930s to the 1960s and points between, is the story of the strange relationship between Elena and Hale. Normally, I don't like the stories where men and women are thrown accidentally together and, under stress, become lovers, but I didn't mind this one which is especially surprising because Powers not only doesn't describe their two nights of sex but doesn't really describe how they come to love each other. It just happens as they work as spies in Nazi-occupied Paris.
The novel has four or five passages of beautiful prose, and one is when Hale, listening to the tapping of cryptic signals on the radio wonders if his old lover Elena is at the keys. Another is when he thinks it would just be better if he never saw Elena again.
A key part of the novel is the question of faith and why anyone would deny, if not the existence, the authority and company of God. Elena's early faith in Communism, including a statement that she would willingly obey a command to return to Moscow to be executed because she has faith that such a fate would help bring about a better, Communist world, is clearly stems from the betrayed Catholic faith of her childhood (her parents were killed by Catholic loyalists during the Spanish Civil War). She looses her faith in Communism when she is exposed to the cryptic, secret order that exists in Soviet Intelligence to preserve and extend a deal Russia has made with the flesh and blood devouring Mistress of Misfortune, Russia's protective djinn. (Powers, in a chapter epigraph, literalizes Karl Marx's famous line about the specter of communism). Elena surprisingly recovers her old Catholic faith. Hale drifts out of his Catholic faith but discovers it again confronting the djinn of the Arabian wastes and the dangers during his 1963 Ararat expedition. Hale is tempted by the power and immortality the djinn offer, that his brother Kim Philby seeks. And he despairs, at times, of winning. However, he eventually realizes he must press on with hope if not always with faith. His faith is rewarded when he finds Elena at St. Basil's on her fortieth birthday, a promise she made many years ago to the Virgin Mary if she survived Lubyanka Prison.
think it is significant that the novel simply ends Hale's and Elena's story with them embarking on a walk out of the Soviet Union. We have no idea if they make it or not. I think Powers' point is that it's not important whether they make it. It's that they are loyal to each other and try to make it out together. As Hale notes, you have to play the hand dealt by life. Both reject the notion of immortality.
The ideas why Philby and others reject such a faith strike me as powerfully believable. Hale meets a descendant of the Nephiliim in the desert. His top half is like that of an immortal man, his bottom half a stone rooting him in place. Yet he is glad of his situation because he means he will not die and be called to judgement. This same fear and resentment of final judgment motivates Philby against Catholicism. Elena, on the other hand, realizes that it is partially pride that has kept her away from her childhood faith. She hates the idea she must approach God as soiled as any other sinner.
It is also the same sort of pride, a sort of , Hale notes, aristocratic pride, that keeps Philby away from worshiping God. (I also liked the wonderful legends of fallen angels hanging on or being pulled behind Noah's Ark and thus avoiding destruction.) Ultimately, Philby goes for the option of being a sort of king to the Gray People of Moscow, pathetic traitors and Western ex-patriates deprived of their passports and inhabiting, as Powers wonderfully describes it, the same sort of joyless existence as the hell of Babylonian myth. (In fact, in the epilogue's scene in Moscow, Powers does a very good job conveying the sad, pathetic, horrible nature of Soviet Communism. Though Powers doesn't do it, but Milton might as well be invoked in his line about better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
I liked the Catholic influence on this novel. I also liked the phrase about sinning sensuously is sinning like a beast, sinning by deceit is sinning like a man, and sinning by pride is sinning like an angel (and pride is the grandest and most common sin of this novel).
Powers has described this book as "tradecraft meets Lovecraft". It's more tradecraft than Lovecraft, but Powers love of that author shows up at the beginning when members of the 1948 Ararat expedition have, in best Lovecraftian tradition, gone mad. The djinn being drawn to certain mathematical shapes reminded me of Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch-House". The passages where Hale feels like something old and powerful has been drawn down from the stars is like Lovecraft. The descriptions of whirling heavens also reminded me of Lovecraft though, according to the afterword, they are probably more inspired by a dream of John Philby's. Some of the language describing the sensation of being on Ararat's glacier in 1963 reminded me of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness".
Thematically and by depth of research and skill of characterization, the best Powers' secret history I've read.
A very accomplished novel and now, of the Powers' I've read, my favorite.
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services but some, also, with the American and French services; I would be curious if the various recognition signals people employ are taken from actual histories), his Roman Catholic faith, the lives of John Philby and his notorious son Kim, Arabian myths involving djinn and A Thousand Nights and One Night, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Lawrence of Arabia, legends of the Ark on Mount Ararat, biblical allusions to the real story of Solomon threatening to split the disputed child in half with a sword and also to the mysterious Nephiliim of Genesis, other members of the Cambridge spy network, and the literally, in this secret history, ghoulish nature of Communism. There are some typical Powers techniques and themes.
Body swapping of a sort shows up in the confused identities protagonist Andrew Hale experiences when he meets his half-brother, Kim Philby, after the latter has escaped to Moscow. This notion also shows up with the notion of split identities and doubles throughout the book: Kim Philby's ability to be in two places at once until Andrew is born when Kim is ten; John Philby being confused, as an infant, with another child (as usual, when Powers includes real people in his novels, the given details of their lives are drawn from actual histories and biographies -- here, in the unusual step of having an afterword, he explicitly states where many of the details about Philby's life came from), the suppression of identity often felt when in the presence of the djinn, particularly when Hale and Elena Teresa Ceniza-Bendiga (her last name translates into English as Ashbless so another installment is added to Powers' and James Blaylock's joint myth of the Ashbless family) are psychically merged with the djinn during the 1948 expedition to Ararat. Guy Burgess is also said to have killed a double of his.
Powers once again relies on analogies of electricity and general physics to rationalize his magic. The djinn of Mount Ararat are said, because of the presence of anchor stones, to be in a "grounded state". Some djinn inhabit the Heaviside Layer so important in bouncing radio signals around. The importance of a direction of rotation is also here as in Power's Expiration Date.
I liked the notion that the djinn expressed thought as a marcoscopic kinetic animation of surrounding matter -- and the symmetrical idea of imposing thought and experience on them with matter associated with their fellow djinn. I wouldn't classify anything by Powers since his Dinner at the Deviant's Palace as sf -- and neither would he, but he tries very hard to suspend disbelief in his magical worlds by using concepts like symmetry from physics as well as external trappings like the language of electricity. If his magic is not rationalized into sf, associations with the language of rational science is certainly used.
Once again, the chapter epigraphs, here mainly drawn from Gilgamesh and, especially, Rudyard Kipling's Kim (the source of Kim Philby's first name) are very appropriate. When the young Andrew Hale first hears the ritualistic phrases of the secret spy network that exists in the British Special Operations Executive (particularly the wonderful phrase, drawn from Arab myth, "O fish, are you constant to the covenant?", we immediately sense something very important even if Hale doesn't. It reminded me of Scott Crane's first card game on Lake Mead in Last Call when he is reminded that his hand has been assumed. Andrew Hale being raised for great purposes and manipulated and threatened by outside forces reminded me of Kootie in Expiration Date.
Declare also involves family matters, specifically the revelation (not really a surprise to me) that Philby and Hale are half-brothers. (I liked the split of a unified personality into, respectively, an obsession with family and, in Hale, a concern for duty and loyalty). However, in Declare it is the relationship between Hale and Elena and questions of faith, not the exorcism of spirits, that is addressed in the epilogue after the djinn of Mount Ararat have been killed:
In the unusual structure of this novel, which bounces from the 1930s to the 1960s and points between, is the story of the strange relationship between Elena and Hale. Normally, I don't like the stories where men and women are thrown accidentally together and, under stress, become lovers, but I didn't mind this one which is especially surprising because Powers not only doesn't describe their two nights of sex but doesn't really describe how they come to love each other. It just happens as they work as spies in Nazi-occupied Paris.
The novel has four or five passages of beautiful prose, and one is when Hale, listening to the tapping of cryptic signals on the radio wonders if his old lover Elena is at the keys. Another is when he thinks it would just be better if he never saw Elena again.
A key part of the novel is the question of faith and why anyone would deny, if not the existence, the authority and company of God. Elena's early faith in Communism, including a statement that she would willingly obey a command to return to Moscow to be executed because she has faith that such a fate would help bring about a better, Communist world, is clearly stems from the betrayed Catholic faith of her childhood (her parents were killed by Catholic loyalists during the Spanish Civil War). She looses her faith in Communism when she is exposed to the cryptic, secret order that exists in Soviet Intelligence to preserve and extend a deal Russia has made with the flesh and blood devouring Mistress of Misfortune, Russia's protective djinn. (Powers, in a chapter epigraph, literalizes Karl Marx's famous line about the specter of communism). Elena surprisingly recovers her old Catholic faith. Hale drifts out of his Catholic faith but discovers it again confronting the djinn of the Arabian wastes and the dangers during his 1963 Ararat expedition. Hale is tempted by the power and immortality the djinn offer, that his brother Kim Philby seeks. And he despairs, at times, of winning. However, he eventually realizes he must press on with hope if not always with faith. His faith is rewarded when he finds Elena at St. Basil's on her fortieth birthday, a promise she made many years ago to the Virgin Mary if she survived Lubyanka Prison.
think it is significant that the novel simply ends Hale's and Elena's story with them embarking on a walk out of the Soviet Union. We have no idea if they make it or not. I think Powers' point is that it's not important whether they make it. It's that they are loyal to each other and try to make it out together. As Hale notes, you have to play the hand dealt by life. Both reject the notion of immortality.
The ideas why Philby and others reject such a faith strike me as powerfully believable. Hale meets a descendant of the Nephiliim in the desert. His top half is like that of an immortal man, his bottom half a stone rooting him in place. Yet he is glad of his situation because he means he will not die and be called to judgement. This same fear and resentment of final judgment motivates Philby against Catholicism. Elena, on the other hand, realizes that it is partially pride that has kept her away from her childhood faith. She hates the idea she must approach God as soiled as any other sinner.
It is also the same sort of pride, a sort of , Hale notes, aristocratic pride, that keeps Philby away from worshiping God. (I also liked the wonderful legends of fallen angels hanging on or being pulled behind Noah's Ark and thus avoiding destruction.) Ultimately, Philby goes for the option of being a sort of king to the Gray People of Moscow, pathetic traitors and Western ex-patriates deprived of their passports and inhabiting, as Powers wonderfully describes it, the same sort of joyless existence as the hell of Babylonian myth. (In fact, in the epilogue's scene in Moscow, Powers does a very good job conveying the sad, pathetic, horrible nature of Soviet Communism. Though Powers doesn't do it, but Milton might as well be invoked in his line about better to rule in Hell than serve in Heaven.
I liked the Catholic influence on this novel. I also liked the phrase about sinning sensuously is sinning like a beast, sinning by deceit is sinning like a man, and sinning by pride is sinning like an angel (and pride is the grandest and most common sin of this novel).
Powers has described this book as "tradecraft meets Lovecraft". It's more tradecraft than Lovecraft, but Powers love of that author shows up at the beginning when members of the 1948 Ararat expedition have, in best Lovecraftian tradition, gone mad. The djinn being drawn to certain mathematical shapes reminded me of Lovecraft's "The Dreams in the Witch-House". The passages where Hale feels like something old and powerful has been drawn down from the stars is like Lovecraft. The descriptions of whirling heavens also reminded me of Lovecraft though, according to the afterword, they are probably more inspired by a dream of John Philby's. Some of the language describing the sensation of being on Ararat's glacier in 1963 reminded me of Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness".
Thematically and by depth of research and skill of characterization, the best Powers' secret history I've read.
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LibraryThing member jercox
Interesting style of writing, heavy on moving back and forwards in time (flashbacks, but not written as such). Ties together spies and Arab / Russian folklore to create a compelling story.
LibraryThing member viking2917
one of my all-time favorites. Somehow manages to combine Spies, Djinn, Kim Philby, Lawrence of Arabia, Mt Ararat, Saharan adventures, Nazis and the Cold War. And with a plausible historical storyline behind it. For espionage enthusiasts, the author's note at the end laying out the history is like
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discovering buried treasure. Show Less
LibraryThing member williemeikle
DECLARE is Tim Powers' take on a British, Le Carre style spy novel, with his own added supernatural twists. And as such, it's a resounding success. What starts in murky waters in the British spy services quickly spirals out into the history and final culmination of a decades long investigation into
Powers' decision to weave this tale in and around the known facts of Kim Philby's life in the secret services is a brave one, but having facts and actual events involved serves to anchor the story in reality and allows the flights of fancy and supernatural to feel more rooted. As ever, Powers' narrative is a fractured one, but the aforementioned Philby life story serves as a backbone that holds the whole thing together, even the more outlandish sections.
Powers' way with a sentence is much in evidence, and there are the trademark lyrical flourishes that, in this story even more than some of his others, reminded me much of some of the work of Roger Zelazny.
It's a largish book, near 600 pages in the edition that I read, but I breezed through it , for despite the sometimes dense exposition which shows the depth of research that was undertaken, at its simplest, this is a love story, and what with that, and the added thrill of the Le Carre like machinations, I loved it, and read it in two sittings over two days.
Highly recommended.
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what might or might not inhabit the high peaks of Mount Ararat, the reasons why the Russians are so interested, and the motives, ulterior mostly, of one of the most famous spies of all.Powers' decision to weave this tale in and around the known facts of Kim Philby's life in the secret services is a brave one, but having facts and actual events involved serves to anchor the story in reality and allows the flights of fancy and supernatural to feel more rooted. As ever, Powers' narrative is a fractured one, but the aforementioned Philby life story serves as a backbone that holds the whole thing together, even the more outlandish sections.
Powers' way with a sentence is much in evidence, and there are the trademark lyrical flourishes that, in this story even more than some of his others, reminded me much of some of the work of Roger Zelazny.
It's a largish book, near 600 pages in the edition that I read, but I breezed through it , for despite the sometimes dense exposition which shows the depth of research that was undertaken, at its simplest, this is a love story, and what with that, and the added thrill of the Le Carre like machinations, I loved it, and read it in two sittings over two days.
Highly recommended.
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LibraryThing member jsburbidge
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
The best Powers I've read: if not quite at a masterpiece level, then head and shoulders above most genre works.
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
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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 I've read: if not quite at a masterpiece level, then head and shoulders above most genre works.
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LibraryThing member Gwendydd
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
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 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.
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
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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 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.
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LibraryThing member AlexEpstein
A strange fantasy novel about shifting alliances among spies in a world where supernatural entities exist. It's interesting to think about because it's generally hard to figure out what the hero wants. There's a love story. And he's a dedicated spy trying to infiltrate ... something ... but the
In other words it bends all sorts of narrative rules and even arguably breaks some.
Somehow it gets away with it. I wasn't sure why I kept reading it, but I did. Maybe because I wanted to find out what the supernatural powers are, and what exactly happened on Mount Ararat in 1948.
I wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery. That must be it.
There's a fascinating epilog, too. The book creates a whole mythology around the British spy turncoat Kim Philby. It was interesting to read how Powers came up with the story. He was reading biographies of Philby, and kept running across events that suggested a much more interesting story hidden just behind what was written. Why did Philby weep for two days when his pet fox died -- when he had only wept so much for the death of his father? Why did a Saudi sheik give Philby, as a child, a twenty carat diamond? And what was the real meaning between Solomon's offer to split the baby in two?
Powers set himself a rule, as he constructed the story of DECLARE, to abide by all the historical facts, and only conjure up what was behind them.
Fascinating. Worth a read.
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story unfolds in back-and-forth time -- 1948, then 1963, then 1941, then 1945, then 1963 again. And it changes main characters halfway through. I don't know what the stakes are.The hero is a bit of cipher, as spies sometimes are. What am I rooting for? In other words it bends all sorts of narrative rules and even arguably breaks some.
Somehow it gets away with it. I wasn't sure why I kept reading it, but I did. Maybe because I wanted to find out what the supernatural powers are, and what exactly happened on Mount Ararat in 1948.
I wanted to get to the bottom of the mystery. That must be it.
There's a fascinating epilog, too. The book creates a whole mythology around the British spy turncoat Kim Philby. It was interesting to read how Powers came up with the story. He was reading biographies of Philby, and kept running across events that suggested a much more interesting story hidden just behind what was written. Why did Philby weep for two days when his pet fox died -- when he had only wept so much for the death of his father? Why did a Saudi sheik give Philby, as a child, a twenty carat diamond? And what was the real meaning between Solomon's offer to split the baby in two?
Powers set himself a rule, as he constructed the story of DECLARE, to abide by all the historical facts, and only conjure up what was behind them.
Fascinating. Worth a read.
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LibraryThing member ChrisRiesbeck
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
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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 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
LibraryThing member tanenbaum
I am an enormous fan of Tim Powers, so understand that when I say this is not my favorite work of his, I still recommend it whole-heartedly. Declare has a heavier feeling that most of Powers' other books, and at times can get a little bogged down. However, as other reviewers have noted, it is a
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curiously haunting book, staying with you long after you put it down, and popping up in your mind when you least expect it. The story is not straightforward, jumping around a bit chronologically, and thus it improves on the second and third readings when you are better able to integrate the full storyline. One of the beautiful things that Powers does is infuse the everyday world with systems of magic that are so consistently and richly developed that they seem like they are truth viewed from a different angle. This book is no exception as he explores a secret or alternate history of the Cold War in which Mount Ararat, the ark, and djinn are bigger factors in the struggle of nations than nuclear arms. Show Less
LibraryThing member krisiti
Odd, like all Powers' books. A spy story, with genies (djinn). As a concept, that didn't work very well for me, not nearly as well as his Romantic poets with vampires, or the gangsters, poker and fisher king cross.While I was reading I had that song The Freshmen, by Verve something, running in my
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head. I think because I heard it just before I began the book, and that line about "his face was stiff with tears" somehow seemed to fit into the song, right meter and everything.The British intelligence service was rather nasty. Killing Cassagnac! Good thing the Russians were so much worse. . . Show Less
LibraryThing member SimoneA
Declare is, in brief, a supernatural espionage thriller, set in the Cold War and more modern times. The plot is quite complicated and I feel like I didn't have enough knowledge of the background story to grasp everything. It also took me quite some time to 'get' into the story. However, the
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supernatural component was exciting enough to keep me reading. Show Less
LibraryThing member chive
I thought this book was utter drivel. The parts of the book about spying were unconvincing as a spy novel and the parts that were about the supernatural were unconvincing for that genre. Frankly I'm frustrated with myself that I bothered finishing it but the rules say if I start a book I have to
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finish it. Blah Show Less
LibraryThing member ansate
Slow, slow going. But eventually I was so drawn in that I was invested in what happened next. I read the first half in 2 months and the last half in a week.
LibraryThing member SaintBrevity
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
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reefs of disparate tropes with a poise that leaves the reader stunned. Very highly recommended. Show Less
LibraryThing member lewispike
"Spycraft meets Lovecraft" is the tag line really. And it sums it up nicely.
Apparently Powers started research Kim Philby, who had an interesting enough life (he was a double agent for the NKVD/KGB working inside the British Security Services (SIS and MI6)). There are, apparently, strange
The result? Secret agencies working to recruit, control, or kill djinn, angels and the like, within their own national spy agencies. And if you like the Lovecraftian side of things, you'll love the way it all fits together.
The historical details are all correct - he challenged himself not to change them and STILL produce the book - but it doesn't feel forced at any point although it does jump around in time more than a little, which takes a bit of getting used to.
All in all an excellent read.
Apparently Powers started research Kim Philby, who had an interesting enough life (he was a double agent for the NKVD/KGB working inside the British Security Services (SIS and MI6)). There are, apparently, strange
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inconsistencies and odd behaviour (I'm sure there would be in anyone's life, particularly if he's a double agent). Powers, however, creates a world of djinn, magic and old ones that quite neatly fit into the gaps in a worryingly coherent fashion.The result? Secret agencies working to recruit, control, or kill djinn, angels and the like, within their own national spy agencies. And if you like the Lovecraftian side of things, you'll love the way it all fits together.
The historical details are all correct - he challenged himself not to change them and STILL produce the book - but it doesn't feel forced at any point although it does jump around in time more than a little, which takes a bit of getting used to.
All in all an excellent read.
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LibraryThing member tmph
Rec. from the Well, I ordered and have received and have been reading DECLARE by Powers. Not very impressed so far. Hundred pages in Paris during the war and nothing much has happened, sites and names dropped like bad drive-by scenes in an on location movie, teasing love affair with a super-human
Though, I do like the evocation of the girl's true love, the Communist Party, her complete committment.
As always, however, I expect more becuz I'm a slow reader. I want more to happen, or more depth, with better writing. Heh. Perhaps I'll report back after more reading. I do want more Philby.
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17 yr old girl, and then whoops they split up.Though, I do like the evocation of the girl's true love, the Communist Party, her complete committment.
As always, however, I expect more becuz I'm a slow reader. I want more to happen, or more depth, with better writing. Heh. Perhaps I'll report back after more reading. I do want more Philby.
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LibraryThing member mathegudrun
The story seems interesting at first but then becomes complete utter nonsense. Most scenes are not believable - even not as magic tale. I could not engage with the persons and at the end it finishes rather hastily. The author has no idea about the magic creatures he pulls into the plot. He just
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describes surfaces as he understands them. This book was a waste of time. Show Less
LibraryThing member dbsovereign
Not my favorite Powers book, but an interesting story of World War 2 spies. Gets off to rather a slow start, but then takes off in rather a whirlwind of deception and counter deception. Part spy and part horror novel.
LibraryThing member SESchend
Any book that reads for 100 pages like a Le Carre spy novel before it diverts into the fantastic is a blast. If you don't mind [fantastic elements non-spoiled] and Cold War conspiracies mashed together, this is a book for you.
LibraryThing member chosler
Winner of World Fantasy Award; a perfect blend of espionage novel, historical fiction, and dark fantasy, this book tells the tale of three spies involvement over 60 years in trying to tame and/or destroy creatures known variously as djinn and fallen angels. Heavy detail on British and Soviet
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military operations and espionage activities from 1920-1964. Explicit violence, language, sexual situations (non-explicit), and heavy drinking. Show Less
LibraryThing member isabelx
Ultimately Hale did begin to suspect that there was a single story behind many of the old reports and rumors he was investigating: from Armenian fugitives he learned that an earthquake had shaken Mount Ararat in eastern Turkey in 1883 and knocked down a lot of ancient standing stones around the
This is a tale of British and French attempts to stop the Russians using a djinn from Mount Ararat to protect the soviet state during World War II and the following decades. The book is too long really, and I was quite bored until at least a third of the way through it. The changes between various time periods skips between the war, the late forties and the early sixties were confusing, and it didn't get round to describing what happened after the war until much later in the book, so I kept putting it down and not picking up again for weeks.
It became much more exciting and enjoyable in the second half.
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17,000-foot level; Russian and Turkish scientists had visited the site, and subsequently a Russian team went to the mountain with wagons, and then went away by train to Moscow; and until the Turkish Army evacuated all the Armenians from the area in 1915, Armenian blacksmiths had hammered on their anvils every day, even on Sundays and holidays, hoping by their staccato ringing noise to keep something from descending the mountain.This is a tale of British and French attempts to stop the Russians using a djinn from Mount Ararat to protect the soviet state during World War II and the following decades. The book is too long really, and I was quite bored until at least a third of the way through it. The changes between various time periods skips between the war, the late forties and the early sixties were confusing, and it didn't get round to describing what happened after the war until much later in the book, so I kept putting it down and not picking up again for weeks.
It became much more exciting and enjoyable in the second half.
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LibraryThing member sarcher
I struggled with the first two hundred pages as the author deliberately kept the reader in the dark regarding a number of critical past events. It makes sense as an attempt to ally the reader with the protagonists similar lack of knowledge at certain points in time in the narrative, but made me
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think about giving up a couple of times. I thought it was over-detailed, however, after reading the work the author put into having the narrative line up with real world events I'm happy to be wrong on that subject! Show Less
LibraryThing member Shrike58
Powers' entry in the category of the genre of occult intelligence & police procedural novels I admire more than I like, probably because the format of the long immersive novel is usually not to my preference. That said Powers' efforts to bind his story to the facts of real history are impressive
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and the payoff was emotionally satisfying. Show Less
LibraryThing member ben_a
The grey-on-grey palette of LeCarre shot through with silver threads of the occult -- an enjoyable, if overlong book.
[Now, about a year later, this is a book that grows with time. I can't quite get it out of my head. "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have
[Now, about a year later, this is a book that grows with time. I can't quite get it out of my head. "Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare, if you have
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understanding." Show Less
Subjects
Awards
Nebula Award (Nominee — Novel — 2001)
Mythopoeic Awards (Finalist — Adult Literature — 2002)
World Fantasy Award (Nominee — Novel — 2001)
SF Site Reader's Choice (2001)
SF Site Editor's Choice (2001)
International Horror Guild Award (Winner — Novel — 2000)
Arthur C. Clarke Award (Shortlist — 2011)
Locus Recommended Reading (2000)
Language
Original publication date
2000
Physical description
528 p.; 9.4 inches
ISBN
0380976528 / 9780380976522