A novel of Pynchonian interest?

The Great Quail quail at libyrinth.com
Tue May 28 12:22:44 CDT 2002


I am currently reading Tim Powers' latest novel, the thoroughly 
excellent book "Declare." (For those of you unfamiliar with Tim 
Powers, he is an extremely imaginative writer of speculative fiction 
-- I hesitate to call it "fantasy," as Power's work is miles ahead of 
the dwarf and goblin pack. His books "The Stress of her Regard" and 
"On Stranger Tides" are two of my favorite genre novels.)

"Declare" concerns itself with secret agencies and political 
intrigue, and ranges from the 1880s to the 1960s, with a cast of 
spies hailing from all kinds of agencies-within-agencies -- the OSS, 
SIS, SOE, CIA, KGB, GRU, NKGB, Mossad, and so on. Locales include the 
Arabian desert, occupied Paris, postwar Berlin, and London during the 
blitz. The book revolves around the presence of powerful supernatural 
beings and various governmental attempts to either control or destroy 
them. For those of you familiar with Powers' fiction, you know that 
he can seamlessly weave the most outlandish elements of the occult 
together with science and politics in a remarkable way -- indeed, 
this novel links atmospheric radio wave distortion to the presence of 
elemental beings, generating a unique system of control and 
communication relating to, of all things, djinn. (Who may or may not 
be fallen angels....)

Anyway -- international Great Game "sub rosa" intrigues, nation- and 
time-spanning interconnected characters, messing around with 
atmospheric distortion, contact with supernatural entities, mucking 
about in postwar Berlin, London during the blitz.... Oh Pynchonians, 
as Burroughs would say, You connect the dots, you pick up the 
pieces....

--Quail






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