Reviews and Comments

I was surprised at how many loose ends this book had, and by the disconnect between the internal dialogue of the protagonist and the image that everyone seems to have of him. Seriously, this guy is called Frosty Bogart -- you'd expect him to at least not be quite as loquacious as he is.

The book starts off with an amnesia trope (he doesn't remember anything about the last five years) but doesn't explain much once he gets his memory back. You're never really sure why he starts off in the jungle like he does, why he immediately goes for the place he does, and halfway through the book you're even confused which time period you're in, as Frosty is kidnapping one character in the same place five years ago at the same time he's escaping with her later -- and there are no timestamps or signifiers between the intervals.

Adding up to that... the book just doesn't make any goddamn sense. It's entertaining, but there's no way in hell a resource like Frosty would be left in the place he's in, and once there, there's no way they would have just left him. He's just too damn valuable, and you would have expected Congress, the Executive Branch and half the CEOs in the country to be lined up waiting to slip Frosty some tongue.

So... yeah. A bit like Monster Island, and a bit like Altered Carbon. Enjoyable, but too much stream of consciousness for me.

I was expecting far more from this. I was surprised by the Anubis Gates and shocked by Last Call, so surely Declare, a story that mixes magic with spycraft, would be a perfect match of horror and intrigue.

But it isn't what you think. It's about the Cold War, but It's about Andrew Hale, a spy for the SOE who loves a woman called Elena... who is a spy for the Russians.

Only... it's not about that. It's really about Kim Philby and the British SOE, mixed in with the existence of powerful yet abstract creatures called Djinn.

Only... it's not about that. It's about 500 pages of description of boxes, countryside, prep school antagonism and sentences that cover half the page. I don't know how I didn't notice it before, but Powers can't write staccato to save his life. Here's a sentence cracked open from a random page:

"To these wizened babushkas the NKVD was still the Cheka or even the pre-revolution Okhrana, and they took a particularly intense interest in Hale's researches, often pausing to cross themselves as they translated some musty old report of a Russian expedition to Turkey in 1883 or a description of burned grass around little coin-sized eruption holes in the grave plots of Russian cemeteries."

Which would be fine, in isolation. But essentially half the book is needless detail that is irrelevant to the plot. You would never in a million years catch Iain Banks or Charlie Stross going off track in this way, and by the end of the book I would scan each page for relevant words to see if it was actually worth reading.

Charlie Stross mentioned this as an analogue to his Laundry books. I think that's incorrect; the Laundry deals directly with inimical threats to humanity, whereas the Djinn are not opposed to humanity and most of the book is taken up with inter-agency wrangling. And Philby.

There needs to be a special section for Philby, because the man is clearly the center of the book -- and he's a slimeball in every sense of the word. Clearly Powers read up on the real Philby and mentions details from Philby's life, but that hardly makes him more sympathetic. He loathes and is loathed by every character in the novel, and his preening sense of entitlement, fated destiny and "special nature" only make him more intolerable. He's like Harry Potter crossed with Christopher Monckton.

So... yes. Hated it, hated it, hated it.

There are some good points to this book. Just about everyone I know who has looked into the future a ways down the road has not liked what has been staring back at them. But...

The man is a crank.

He covers the history of the US with outright venom, detailing at every step how oil and non-renewable resources have enabled mankind to do things that are not sustainable, but then goes out of his way to worry about HIV going airborne and how hip hop is going to contribute to the breakdown of civilization. His coverage of the southern states is simply dyspeptic.

In general, he is broadly correct and cites his sources. However, he speculates far too much on how society reacts to shortfall, without following through the implications on a global scale. he talks about the end of oil and the need to grow food locally... but barely covers what happens to Africa, India and China when they can no longer feed their citizens. It might be that he simply didn't know what the overall impact of climate change was, but I suspect that his vision simply didn't reach outside the US.

It's a shame. In firmer hands with less self indulgence, this could have been brilliant. As it is, he continually undermines his own citations and evidence with some transparent wish-fulfillment.

EDIT: Also worth reading a New Yorker article for more context on Kunstler: www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/01/26/090126fa_fact_mcgrath?currentPage=all