Declare by Tim Powers

Declare by Tim Powers
I’ll admit right off that one part of the SF genre that I’m particularly fond of are secret histories – SF or fantasy books that tell of the “hidden” parts of real history. A thriving part of this area involves secret, usually government organizations that are dealing with the supernatural in some fashion. The Indiana Jones movies are one example, though they don’t really delve as deeply as many. Charles Stross’s wonderful The Atrocity Archives is one great recent example. Mike Mignola’s Hellboy and B.P.R.D (Bureau of Paranormal Research and Defense) graphic novels (and the movie) are another. But the best example to date remains Tim Power’s superb novel Declare. Published in 2001, it is Power’s best novel and is one of the best fantasy novels of the last decade.
Powers has the remarkable ability to look at disparate parts of real history, examine these bits for where things are quite explained or are just about strange, and weave a compelling “secret history” of what was really going on. It’s impressive not only in that he does it in a way which seems consistent with the real history we know, but in a way in which we accept – at least as we read – the supernatural underpinnings he creates. Moreover, science fiction and fantasy fans are prone to talk of sense of wonder and the feeling it invokes: Powers manages to take often rather mundane history – in the case of the history in Declare, rather squalid and nasty history – and overlay it with remarkable moments of sense of wonder.
Declare weaves together a number of parts of our own history. Lawrence of Arabia’s mysterious death; the career of Kim Philby, the British double agent/Russian spy; the history of the Soviet Union and why it was so brutal while it lasted but at the same time why it fell; the spy networks in World War II and afterwards; and more. Some of this can be summed up with one quote, spoken by one key character to another:
What sort of personage did your Lawrence of Arabia learn of, in the brontologion scroll he found at the Qumran Wadi in 1917? Why did the American President Wilson suffer a stroke immediately upon returning to America from the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, where he had reluctantly agreed to take the League of Nations mandate to occupy eastern Turkey, in spite of the advice of the experts – experts on ancient Persian languages and the Crusade! – in his secret Inquiry group? Why did Lenin suffer the strokes that killed him in ’22 and ’23, after the Red Army had recaptured and then lost the Kars and Van districts in eastern Turkey?
Powers is a fan of John le Carre, and much of the book reflects le Carre’s writing – not only the details, but in some ways style and even attitude. Its characters are all agents, first in the Second World War, then in the Cold War. Nominally working for their governments’ chief espionage agency, they are actually in most cases working for secret agencies within those agencies – ones that deal with the supernatural. But Powers reveals what’s going on only a bit at a time. Part of the joy of the book is the way the real story of what is going on is slowly revealed as the book unfolds. Thus, I won’t give many of the details here. But suffice to say that this is a universe in which fallen angels inhabit the earth – often in the form of what men would call Djinn, and often in fantastical shapes. In fact, the Djinn manifest their thoughts physically, so they take many shapes – whirlwinds, swarms of birds, and so on. A number of these Djinn live on Mount Arrarat and one has been captured by the Russians and has become the “guardian angel” of the Soviet Union.
Andrew Hale was born in Palestine to an ex-nun; he doesn’t know who his father is. But on the day of his first communion, his mother takes him to London and introduces him to the British secret service. For some reason that he doesn’t understand, he’s special and they want to use him – first simply as a radio operator in occupied France, later as an agent in a mission to Mount Ararat – one that fails miserably. Along the way, he has sign cant interactions with Kim Philby – who also seems to have a strange connection to the supernatural goings on. This is all in the past of the main story – much told by chapters set in the past – while the main story focuses on a second mission to Ararat. The suspense builds up very nicely, and all the diverse pieces fit together by novel’s end.
It’s worth noting that the spy-story parts of this are very well done in their own right and would have been worthy of le Carre. Powers works in a lot of convincing details of the workings of the British, Soviet, and French secret services, and also effectively portrays how nasty such organizations can be.
But of course weaved in seamlessly with this realistic spy fiction is a detailed, consistent supernatural (and religious) underpinning. Several times along the way, we encounter djinn, who are fallen angels. They are very alien and very awe-inspiring. One is trapped in pool, imprisoned their thousands of years before by King Solomon, who had power over the djinn. Others are manifest in sandstorms or swirling in the air. All are nasty – some in a completely amoral way, in that they don’t seem to notice or care what happens around them, others – like Russia’s bloodthirsty guardian angel, are frighteningly evil.
This is a wonderful book. Looking back at it, the only reason that it probably wasn’t nominated for a Hugo award was that it came out in a limited edition that many didn’t see the year before it came out in a regular hardcover edition, and thus many readers didn’t see it in time to nominate it (I certainly didn’t). It’s definitely worth reading.