Description
TIM POWERS is the author of over a dozen novels, including The Anubis Gates, Last Call, On Stranger Tides and Three Days to Never . He has received the Philip K. Dick, World Fantasy, and Locus awards. He lives in San Bernardino, California. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. ''Dazzling. . . A tour de force, a brilliant blend of John le Carre spy fiction with the otherworldly. -- Dean Koontz ''[Powers] orchestrates reality and fantasy so artfully that the reader is not allowed a moment's doubt throughout this tall tale.'' -- New Yorker ''Highly ingenious. . . . No one else writes like Powers, and Declare finds him at the top of his game.'' -- San Francisco Chronicle '' DECLARE is classic Tim Powers, his best novel since Last Cal , and possibly his best to date.'' -- Locus Magazine ''Tim Powers is a brilliant writer. Declare 's occult subtext for the deeper Cold War is wonderfully original and brilliantly imagined.'' -- William Gibson ''There's never been a novel quite like Declare -- one of the protean Powers's most absorbing and rewarding creations.'' -- Kirkus Starred Review --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title. This supernatural suspense thriller crosses several genres--espionage, geopolitics, religion, fantasy. But like the chicken crossing the road, it takes quite a while to get to the other side. En route, Tim Powers covers a lot of territory: Turkey, Armenia, the Saudi Arabian desert, Beirut, London, Paris, Berlin, and Moscow. Andrew Hale, an Oxford lecturer who first entered Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service as an 18-year-old schoolboy, is called back to finish a job that culminated in a deadly mission on Mount Ararat after the end of World War II. Now it's 1963, and cold war politics are behind the decision to activate Hale for another attempt to complete Operation Declare and bring down the Communist government before Moscow can harness the powerful, other-worldly forces concentrated on the summit of the mountain, supposed site of the landing of Noah's ark. James Theodora is the über-spymaster whose internecine rivalry with other branches of the Secret Intelligence Service traps Hale between a rock and a hard place, literally and figuratively. There's plenty of mountain and desert survival stuff here, a plethora of geopolitical and theological history, and a big serving of A Thousand and One Nights , which is Hale's guide to the meteorites, drogue stones, and amonon plant, which figure in this complicated tale. There's a love story, too, and a bizarre twist on the Kim Philby legend that posits both Philby and Hale as the only humans who can tame the powers of the djinns who populate Mount Ararat. This is an easy book to get lost in, and Powers's many fans will have a field day with it. The rest of us may have a harder time. --Jane Adams --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. 'Tim Powers is a brilliant writer. Declare's occult subtext for the deeper Cold War is wonderfully original and brilliantly executed' - William Gibson 'Dazzling - a tour de force, a brillant blend of John Le Carre spy fiction with the otherworldly, packed with historical fact, dazzling flights of imagination, and wonderful suspense' - Dean Koontz 'Philip K. Dick felt that one day Tim Powers would be one of our greatest fantasy writers. Phil was right' - Roger Zelazny 'If you've ever woken half way through a fabulous dream and desperately wanted to know what would have happened next: relax. Those unfinished stories go to Tim Powers, and he's good enough to write them down for all of us' - Nick Harkaway 'A brilliant, strange crossbreed of the spy thriller and the supernatural' - China Mieville --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From The New Yorker Powers's fans follow him from book to book on the justified assumption that his fantastic imagination will always run ahead of theirs and provide surprise and suspense in abundance. His latest novel, which unfolds in the world of twentieth-century espionage, places malevolent supernatural forces in the service of the Cold War. Powers creates an appallingly life-like portrait of the British traitor Kim Philby, and he orchestrates reality and fantasy so artfully that the reader is not allowed a moment's doubt throughout this tall tale. Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. From Publishers Weekly Powers (The Anubis Gates, etc.), known hitherto as an expert fantasy writer, has created a mind-bending mix of genres here, placing his gifts for extreme speculative fiction in service of a fantastical spy story involving rivalries between no fewer than four intelligence services: British, French, Russian and American. In 1963, Andrew Hale is summoned to reenter the secret service. He has a past embracing anti-Nazi activities in Occupied ParisAwhere he fell in love with Elena, a Spanish-born Communist operativeAand a spectacularly unsuccessful mission on Mount Ararat in 1948, the purpose of which only gradually becomes clear. Powers posits that the mountain, as the speculative last home of Noah's Ark, is also the dwelling place of many djinns, supernatural beings that often take the form of rocks in the Arabian deserts. The father of British spy Kim Philby, a noted Arabist, had been a keen observer of these phenomena and taught his son about them. Now it seems that a supernatural power, manifesting itself as an old woman, is safeguarding the Soviet Union, and if fragments of a destroyed djinn can be introduced into Moscow, they could destroy her protection and make the Soviet Union susceptible to normal human laws. This is Hale's mission. In 1948 it failed, and most of his commando force was destroyed. On his return 15 years later, with Philby, Hale succeeds in shooting fragments of djinn into Philby, who then returns to Moscow. Upon Philby's death many years later, the Soviet Union duly collapses. The styles of spy fiction, with dense counterplotting and extremes of caution, and the spectacular supernatural scenes simply do not blend. It's all offbeat and daringly imaginative, but ultimately rather foolish entertainment. (Jan. 9) Forecast: This original novel, despite its strengths, is unlikely to satisfy fully fans of either spycraft or fantasyAand such is the pitfall of genre-bending. A 6-city author tour plus vigorous promotion online and off could give the book some turbo power, though. Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition. Read more
Features & Highlights
- 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.
