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


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.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
No one writing today fuses history with fantasy as shrewdly -- or as unpredictably -- as Tim Powers. The best, most representative Powers novels (The Anubis Gates, The Stress of Her Regard, Last Call) focus on anomalous occurrences in the lives of actual historical figures (Byron, Shelley, Bugsy Siegel) and use those occurrences as jumping-off points for an extravagantly imagined series of fictions. The latest Powers novel, Declare, once again employs this distinctive, remarkably flexible technique. The result is one of the finest, most idiosyncratic fantasies of the season.

In Declare, Powers edges into John le Carré territory, straddling genre boundaries to create something surprising and new: a supernatural espionage thriller. Two characters -- one fictional, one real -- dominate the narrative. The first is Andrew Hale, a scholar/spy whose career takes him into -- and out of -- the inner circles of the British Secret Service. The second is Kim Philby, the Soviet mole whose career inspired Le Carré's masterpiece Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy.

Declare opens with a brief, enigmatic prologue set in 1948, in the course of which we see an unidentified man fleeing in terror down the slopes of Mount Ararat, pursued -- quite literally -- by demons. The narrative then jumps ahead some 15 years and introduces us to that fleeing figure: Andrew Hale, a former intelligence agent who has built a successful second career as a university lecturer, and who is about to be reinstated in his original profession. When the phone rings on a quiet London afternoon in 1963, a voice from the past reaches into Hale's new life, drawing him back into a clandestine, long-running intelligence initiative called Operation Declare.

Declare tells the full story of that eponymous operation, moving backward in time to the mysteries of Hale's childhood, and forward to the related mysteries hidden on Mount Ararat. The narrative ranges from wartime London to the Middle East, and is alternately a love story, a war story, a spy story, and a romance of the supernatural. It is also a dramatic account of the adversarial relationship between Philby and Hale, two very different men connected by family secrets, by the political realities of the Cold War, and by the malign influence of ancient, inhuman forces.

No summary could possibly convey the richness, intelligence, and sheer virtuosity of this brilliantly executed novel. No one but Tim Powers could have written it, and his characteristic ingenuity is on full display throughout. Like the best of Powers's earlier work, Declare is a vivid, vibrant hybrid that breaks new ground and makes most of its competitors in the overcrowded fantasy field seem thin, derivative, and fatally underdeveloped.

--Bill Sheehan

Bill Sheehan reviews horror, suspense, and science fiction for Cemetery Dance, The New York Review of Science Fiction, and other publications. His book-length critical study of the fiction of Peter Straub, At the Foot of the Story Tree, has been published by Subterranean Press (www.subterraneanpress.com).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A coded message draws Professor Andrew Hale back into Her Majesty's Secret Service in 1963. Elements from his past are gathering in Beirut, including ex-British counter-espionage chief and Soviet mole Kim Philby and a beautiful former Spanish Civil War soldier-turned-intelligence operative, Elena Ceniza-Bendiga.

Rushing toward a deadly confrontation on Mt Ararat—where a covert Soviet expedition is closing in on the biblical Ark—Hale suddenly finds himself a major player in an extraordinary game of global destiny. It is a contest that will sweep form London to the Arabian desert, from post-war Berlin to Cold-War Moscow. Pitting brother against brother—and bring about the fall of the Iron Curtain.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal

As a young man, Alan Hale, working for British Intelligence, failed to stop a mysterious Soviet mission on Mt. Ararat and re-entered civilian life. Twenty years later, he must return to Turkey to accomplish the mission that has haunted him since the end of World War II. Powers (Earthquake Weather), known for his complex fantasy tales, here turns in a classic spy novel with a supernatural twist that ties Lawrence of Arabia to the fall of the Iron Curtain. Fans of John le Carr will appreciate the authentic period detail, meticulous descriptions of the business of espionage, and portraits of actual spies, such as Kim Philby; others will enjoy the suspense and chilling atmosphere of Cold War antics, as well as Powers's intricate chronology and plotting. [The publisher is marketing this as Powers's mainstream breakout novel.--Ed.]--Devon Thomas, Hass Assoc., Ann Arbor, MI Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Powers, for more than 20 years the reigning king of adult historical fantasy (Earthquake Weather, 1997, etc.), surpasses himself—and enters richly promising new territory—with this intricate, inventive tale of Cold War skullduggery and close encounters with malevolent supernatural entities. The increasingly Byzantine action begins in 1963, when a telephone message delivered in code draws Oxford lecturer (and"retired" secret agent) Andrew Hale back into an intrigue that dates from his wartime service. The narrative thereafter shifts among that present time and several past sequences—the most crucial being a 1948 disaster on Mount Ararat, when men under Hale's command were slaughtered by enemy forces not of this earth. As Hale reenters the duplicitous world of international espionage, Powers gradually reveals the hidden meanings of his former relationships with sinister"contacts" (such as his superior at Whitehall, double-talking James Theodora, and wily Armenian powerbroker Hakob Mammalian); femme fatale Elena Cezina-Bendiga, a Spanish Civil War heroine and passionate Communist ("The Soviet State is my husband, and I am a devoted, obedient wife"); and the historical Kim Philby, the notorious double agent, whose career and personal history eerily parallel Andrew Hale's. T.E. Lawrence also figures here, as do the biblical Ark and various personages and (shifting)"shapes" from The Arabian Nights, as the story careens across Europe and the Middle East, with illuminating side trips to Berlin, Paris, and London during WW II. All this is expertly linked to Operation Declare, designed by British Intelligence to subvert"the Soviet attempt to awaken what slept uneasilyonthetop of Mount Ararat" and unleash its destructive powers. Echoes of Pynchon's V and Gravity's Rainbow (there are many) aside, this is an exciting work, of great originality—and its force is heightened by the skill with which the elusive Philby is characterized and Hale and Elena both made believably complex and potentially tragic figures. There's never been a novel quite like Declare (though comparisons to Neal Stephenson's recent Cryptonomicon will doubtless be made): one of the protean Powers's most absorbing and rewarding creations. Author tour