Reading Wednesday 25/09
Sep. 25th, 2019 02:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livRecently read: Declare by Tim Powers. (c) 2001 Tim Powers, pub William Morrow 2013, ISBN 978-0-06-222138-4. Declare was a present from cjwatson, and I think rysmiel also spoke highly of it. Anyway, it works really well both as a spy novel and a supernatural thriller.
I had been somewhat intimidated to start Declare but actually it's remarkably readable by the standards of either a Tim Powers book or a Le Carré-style spy novel. There's plenty of double-crossing, but the narrative always telegraphs when the viewpoint character is lying. And there's some jumping about between events in the 40s, and their consequences in the 60s, but the structure is made clear, partly by chapter headings indicating time and location, and partly because each flashback is introduced with a scene of the protag reporting earlier events to someone else. This meant that I never had quite the sense of paranoia that you get with actual Le Carré, which I think is helped because almost the whole book focuses on Hale and his handler Theodora, without really getting into how that fits into the various motivations of people higher up in the spy agencies. On the other hand, Declare is never abstract about death; there's a real and constant fear that a spy may be caught and killed by the enemy, or by their own side if that's the most convenient way to keep them quiet.
The thing that really stands out about Declare is how it weaves the supernatural into a Cold War spy novel. The Djinn from Muslim mythology are real in this world and influence geopolitical events. Powers is really fantastic at describing encounters with very powerful, inhuman entities. Also Catholic baptism has measurable supernatural effects, but it's very unclear whether Christianity is otherwise real. The conceit that the life of Kim Philby was just too weird to be true, and can only be explained by supernatural effects is very clever.
It's interesting to move between Hale as a young man, newly inducted as a spy and living in constant (and justified) fear of messing up, and Hale as a more mature man being recalled to the service for a supernatural emergency, when his spy skills are absolutely engrained and intuitive. He doesn't come across as clever in the way a Le Carré protagonist does, but he's believable as a spy, acting out of a mix of genuine loyalty and fear of punishment.
A lot of recent takes on the Cold War genre come across awkwardly because it's hard for a modern reader to sympathize with anyone supporting the Soviet Union but equally you don't want to read the kind of caricatures where all Russians and Communists are just inherently evil. I felt that Declare holds this balance reasonably well; the motivations of characters from multiple morally imperfect sides make sense, you can see why someone might subscribe to Communist ideals but also the actual historical Soviet Union isn't romanticized (and nor is 20th century UK politics). I also liked the inclusion of characters who aren't British (or Anglo-American) or Russian, continental Europeans of various backgrounds, also a whole bunch of different groups from the Arab world.
I wasn't massively keen on the romance subplot, especially not the happily ever after epilogue ending. But I really enjoyed the intertwining of real world history with the imagined interplay between the Djinn and humans.
Currently reading: The boy on the bridge by MR Carey. This is a sequel to The girl with all the gifts, and like its companion it's a zombie book which is on the edge of too gory for me but incredibly compellingly written. I'm not completely convinced by the autistic savant teenager Stephen Greaves, but I'm willing to suspend judgement about whether his characterization is more than just a cliché.
Up next: Likely Moonglow, a recent-ish Michael Chabon I have borrowed from the library.
cjwatson, and I think rysmiel also spoke highly of it. Anyway, it works really well both as a spy novel and a supernatural thriller. I had been somewhat intimidated to start Declare but actually it's remarkably readable by the standards of either a Tim Powers book or a Le Carré-style spy novel. There's plenty of double-crossing, but the narrative always telegraphs when the viewpoint character is lying. And there's some jumping about between events in the 40s, and their consequences in the 60s, but the structure is made clear, partly by chapter headings indicating time and location, and partly because each flashback is introduced with a scene of the protag reporting earlier events to someone else. This meant that I never had quite the sense of paranoia that you get with actual Le Carré, which I think is helped because almost the whole book focuses on Hale and his handler Theodora, without really getting into how that fits into the various motivations of people higher up in the spy agencies. On the other hand, Declare is never abstract about death; there's a real and constant fear that a spy may be caught and killed by the enemy, or by their own side if that's the most convenient way to keep them quiet.
The thing that really stands out about Declare is how it weaves the supernatural into a Cold War spy novel. The Djinn from Muslim mythology are real in this world and influence geopolitical events. Powers is really fantastic at describing encounters with very powerful, inhuman entities. Also Catholic baptism has measurable supernatural effects, but it's very unclear whether Christianity is otherwise real. The conceit that the life of Kim Philby was just too weird to be true, and can only be explained by supernatural effects is very clever.
It's interesting to move between Hale as a young man, newly inducted as a spy and living in constant (and justified) fear of messing up, and Hale as a more mature man being recalled to the service for a supernatural emergency, when his spy skills are absolutely engrained and intuitive. He doesn't come across as clever in the way a Le Carré protagonist does, but he's believable as a spy, acting out of a mix of genuine loyalty and fear of punishment.
A lot of recent takes on the Cold War genre come across awkwardly because it's hard for a modern reader to sympathize with anyone supporting the Soviet Union but equally you don't want to read the kind of caricatures where all Russians and Communists are just inherently evil. I felt that Declare holds this balance reasonably well; the motivations of characters from multiple morally imperfect sides make sense, you can see why someone might subscribe to Communist ideals but also the actual historical Soviet Union isn't romanticized (and nor is 20th century UK politics). I also liked the inclusion of characters who aren't British (or Anglo-American) or Russian, continental Europeans of various backgrounds, also a whole bunch of different groups from the Arab world.
I wasn't massively keen on the romance subplot, especially not the happily ever after epilogue ending. But I really enjoyed the intertwining of real world history with the imagined interplay between the Djinn and humans.
Currently reading: The boy on the bridge by MR Carey. This is a sequel to The girl with all the gifts, and like its companion it's a zombie book which is on the edge of too gory for me but incredibly compellingly written. I'm not completely convinced by the autistic savant teenager Stephen Greaves, but I'm willing to suspend judgement about whether his characterization is more than just a cliché.
Up next: Likely Moonglow, a recent-ish Michael Chabon I have borrowed from the library.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-25 01:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-09-26 10:48 am (UTC)[I have nearly all of his books if you'd like to borrow one, shout]