Declare by Tim Powers

With the arrival of April, I decided to leave off my exploration of time travel novels and move on to something slightly different. I would look at the time travel novels and read other types of novels by some of the writers who had been on the time travel list.

I wanted to go on to others books written by the likes of Octavia Butler, Kurt Vonnegut, and Audrey Niffenegger ( to name just three). I had started my time travel adventure with The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers and thought it would be appropriate to begin April with another Tim Powers novel.

Big mistake.

Although I didn't hate The Anubis Gates , I didn't give it a very high rating, so I shouldn't have been surprised that this other book by Powers, Declare , wouldn't be a favorite either. It isn't that I hate Declare , it's just seems to drag on. It's not my cup of Vodka. The book has been described as "a supernatural spy novel" but it doesn't come off, in my view. The supernatural mumbo jumbo seems a bit pointless and the spy novel portion is ho hum.

As I write this, I've read 82% of the novel....it seems like I've been reading it forever, with no end in sight. I'm determined to finish the book, although I don't foresee my changing my opinion on the novel. 

The plot is non-linear, shifting back and forth in time from the 1940s to the 1960s. Sometimes, as with Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five the non-lineal skipping works. However, I see it as adding nothing to this story.

One character, Kim Philby, is based on a real person. In the novel, Kim Philby stutters. I don't know if the real Philby stuttered, by I found his dialog in the novel to be off-putting. I'm hoping he really did stutter, otherwise having him do so in this novel would be especially lame.