Interesting review posted by Jeff to another list, of Hal Duncan's
_Vellum : The Book of all Hours_ [1].
Anybody else here read it and wants to add their opinion? (and Jeff,
your further thoughts on this one would be interesting, too)
Udhay
[1] http://www.amazon.com/Vellum-Book-Hours-Hal-Duncan/dp/0345487311
From: Jeff Bone <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Sat, 9 Jun 2007 12:21:18 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] The Book of All Hours
Lengthier review forthcoming, but --- after a misspent youth of too
much fiction of all varieties, I've found myself reading less and
less of it over the last several years. Difficult to find stuff
that's novel (pun intended) and innovative enough to hold my interest
lately. In particular fantasy of any kind just isn't my cup of tea
anymore, hasn't been for a very long time - most of my adult life -
with a few notable exceptions.
But: just started a book last night that, thus far, seems quite
likely to be one of "those" books, those few, that captures your
imagination and stands out among all the rest as something truly
wonderful.
Vellum: The Book of All Hours
It's the book that Gaiman was trying to write with American Gods and
Anansi Boys --- but more, the Borges prototype of those books and all
their variant other instantiations besides. It's got the
multiverse- ranging vision and the shifting heroic templates and
genealogies of
Moorcock, the obsessive attention to weird detail and the fluid sense
of archetypal place and time of Jeff Vandermeer and M. John Harris;
Zelazny's jarring sense of mundane and magical superimposed --- the
subtle darkness and epic cosmology of Pullman, the suffocating sense
of history and the cryptobiblia and love of musty museums and
libraries of Lovecraft, and the twisty, delicious gnostic heresy of
all the latter-day Dantes from Milton through Twain and Lewis to
Steven Brust and more recently Glen Duncan. Blaylock comes to mind;
also Doug Bell, Terry Bisson, Tanith Lee, Saberhagen and Sean Stewart
--- and maybe even a little Robert Anton Wilson; stew with a heaping
helping of chopped Jung, season liberally with Tom Robbins and stir
with a Golden Bough.
This writer is set to be to contemporary dark fantasy what Gibson was
to science fiction circa the 80s; both pinnacle of a particular form
and signpost to a paradigm shift. The book is at once mythopoesis
and mythic synthesis, parody and paradigm, post-contemporary and
seminal yet exquisitely, painfully respectful of the long and storied
tradition it terminates.
It's 2017 and The War in Heaven ranges across all space and time,
throughout the plenum underlying all reality --- the Vellum. A
powerful book --- the God of Gods' own Book of Hours (it contains
every possible world; or is it just a map of possible worlds, or is
it the laws of physics reified, or is it the book of all true names,
or the list of final judgments?) has been lost. Or wait, maybe it's
1939, or the Fertile Crescent, 2000 BC. It's the end of time, or the
beginning of everything. Two families --- the Messengers and the
Carters --- whose destinies are inextricably linked seek to avoid
being caught up in the fight between the Convenant of Metatron
(angels - fallen, but orderly) and the Sovereigns (demons, also
fallen angels but independent spirits.) Inanna incarnate --- the
goddess's true name tattooed in magical ink upon her soul --- biker-
babe and newly-minted angel (or "unkin") Phreedom Messenger seeks her
missing brother Thomas, or Puck, among the worlds while on the run
from the forces of Heaven and Hell alike. Assisting in her quest are
her AI sidekick Lady Cypher and her own nascent facility with The
Cant, the language of power, the "machine code" from which reality is
created. Meanwhile, across several generations the Carters seek to
find the hidden book --- or is it their duty to keep it hidden?
Woven throughout these interleaved narratives the occasional narrator
hints at the story of writing the story, shifting back and forth
until you're unsure which is the subject and which the object of this
tale.
Wow.
There's a second book by the same author (Ink: The Book of All
Hours) but I'm not there yet, crawling through the first one savoring
every very intentional word.
If you like this sort of thing, I think you'll enjoy this one...
jb
--
((Udhay Shankar N)) ((udhay @ pobox.com)) ((www.digeratus.com))
