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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