{"id":814,"date":"2007-08-12T05:26:01","date_gmt":"2007-08-12T12:26:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/?p=814"},"modified":"2018-02-22T11:05:02","modified_gmt":"2018-02-22T19:05:02","slug":"disappointed-by-tim-powers-novel-declare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/disappointed-by-tim-powers-novel-declare","title":{"rendered":"Disappointed by Tim Powers’ Novel Declare"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Declare\"<\/a>I finally had to abandon Tim Powers’ supernatural spy novel, Declare<\/span><\/a>. I read over 200 pages into it and just couldn’t go any further. I really enjoyed Powers’ earlier novel, The Anubis Gates<\/span><\/a>, and I had high hopes for Declare<\/span> after reading reviews. But the book didn’t evoke any emotional reaction from me at all. I never really connected with Hale, the main character, and I didn’t care for the way Powers’ narrator alternated back and forth between the 1940s and the 1960s.<\/p>\n

I think part of the problem was my unfamiliarity with many of the historical references in the book. If the characters or the story would have captivated me more, I would have done a little research into the history, but it just wasn’t worth the time. As a point of comparison, when I began reading Patrick O’Brian’s Master and Commander<\/span> series, I only had a surface knowledge of nautical terms and Napleonic history, but I was so interested in Jack Aubrey and Stephen Maturin that I bought companion books to help me understand the story better. I had no such desire with Declare<\/span>.<\/p>\n

I was intrigued by the religious elements in the book, but not enough to keep reading. Fans of spy novels may have better luck with it than I did.<\/p>\n

Disappointing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I finally had to abandon Tim Powers’ supernatural spy novel, Declare. I read over 200 pages into it and just couldn’t go any further. I really enjoyed Powers’ earlier novel, The Anubis Gates, and I had high hopes for Declare after reading reviews. But the book didn’t evoke any emotional reaction from me at all. I never really connected with Hale, the main character, and I didn’t care for the way Powers’ narrator alternated back and forth between the 1940s and the 1960s. I think part of the...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":813,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1057,5],"tags":[842,78,44,162],"class_list":["post-814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review","category-books","tag-book-reviews","tag-reviews","tag-science-fiction","tag-tim-powers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/declare.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pOucj-d8","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1559,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/814\/revisions\/1559"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/nicksenger.com\/onecatholiclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}