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The Ægypt Cycle #2
Love & Sleep
An occult historian’s journey of discovery continues in the second volume of this renowned literary fantasy series by “a deliciously elegant writer” (Kirkus).In The Solitudes, John Crowley introduced readers to Pierce Moffett, a scholar whose area of expertise lies beyond the realm of our daily a land of the imagination known as Ægypt. Retreating to the quiet of upstate New York, Moffett discovers the works of Fellows Kraft, an uncanny source of hermetic revelations. Now, in Love & Sleep, Moffett begins to understand the true importance—and power—of his studies. His search for a secret history of the world has brought him to the threshold of a new era . . . one in which magic works and angels speak to humankind.John Crowley’s Ægypt Cycle is widely regarded as a masterpiece of fantasy literature. Harold Bloom included both The Solitudes and Love & Sleep in his Western Canon.
504 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1994
54 people are currently reading
1047 people want to read
About the author
John Crowley
129 books832 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name. See this thread for more information.
John Crowley was born in Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942; his father was then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 15th volume of fiction (Endless Things) in 2007. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
His first published novels were science fiction: The Deep (1975) and Beasts (1976). Engine Summer (1979) was nominated for the 1980 American Book Award; it appears in David Pringle’s 100 Best Science Fiction Novels.
In 1981 came Little, Big, which Ursula Le Guin described as a book that “all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy.”
In 1980 Crowley embarked on an ambitious four-volume novel, Ægypt, comprising The Solitudes (originally published as Ægypt), Love & Sleep, Dæmonomania, and Endless Things, published in May 2007. This series and Little, Big were cited when Crowley received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.
He is also the recipient of an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant. His recent novels are The Translator, recipient of the Premio Flaianno (Italy), and Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, which contains an entire imaginary novel by the poet. A novella, The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, appeared in 2002. A museum-quality 25th anniversary edition of Little, Big, featuring the art of Peter Milton and a critical introduction by Harold Bloom, is in preparation.
Note: The John Crowley who wrote Sans épines, la rose: Tony Blair, un modèle pour l'Europe? is a different author with the same name. (website)
John Crowley was born in Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942; his father was then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 15th volume of fiction (Endless Things) in 2007. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters.
His first published novels were science fiction: The Deep (1975) and Beasts (1976). Engine Summer (1979) was nominated for the 1980 American Book Award; it appears in David Pringle’s 100 Best Science Fiction Novels.
In 1981 came Little, Big, which Ursula Le Guin described as a book that “all by itself calls for a redefinition of fantasy.”
In 1980 Crowley embarked on an ambitious four-volume novel, Ægypt, comprising The Solitudes (originally published as Ægypt), Love & Sleep, Dæmonomania, and Endless Things, published in May 2007. This series and Little, Big were cited when Crowley received the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Letters Award for Literature.
He is also the recipient of an Ingram Merrill Foundation grant. His recent novels are The Translator, recipient of the Premio Flaianno (Italy), and Lord Byron’s Novel: The Evening Land, which contains an entire imaginary novel by the poet. A novella, The Girlhood of Shakespeare's Heroines, appeared in 2002. A museum-quality 25th anniversary edition of Little, Big, featuring the art of Peter Milton and a critical introduction by Harold Bloom, is in preparation.
Note: The John Crowley who wrote Sans épines, la rose: Tony Blair, un modèle pour l'Europe? is a different author with the same name. (website)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 68 reviews
October 3, 2025
In this second volume of Crowley’s Aegypt cycle we continue to see more of Pierce Moffat and his search for the truth that lies behind (or beyond) our perceptions (or at least a version of it that he can hopefully write into a bestseller). Crowley not only continues with Pierce’s current life in the seemingly idyllic arcadia of the Faraway Hills, but takes us back to his equally rural (though decidedly not idyllic) childhood in Kentucky for some formative moments in Pierce’s development. Interspersed with Moffat’s story are vignettes from the final unpublished historical novel of Fellowes Kraft detailing a tale of John Dee and Giordano Bruno during a time of metaphysical crises for the world that, to Pierce’s great shock and chagrin, explicates the great secret he had seemingly discovered previously about the nature of reality. Crowley’s novel is a collection of decidedly strange stories: tales of werewolf guardians stalking the Kentucky nights; of Giordano Bruno and John Dee remaking the nature of the world under the auspices of Copernicus and Hermes Trismegistus (only to have modern science unfold from their magical spells?); of a young, seemingly feral, girl from the hills that may have changed the course of Pierce’s life and set the mold that would define him; of an old man sending his writer friend out into the world in search of the final remaining piece of the magical world that he is sure must exist and which can vouchsafe his immortality (but which may be nothing more than grist for the writer’s febrile imagination); of a cult selling spiritual healing as the panacea for mental illness.
Drifting amongst all of these stories, as participant or audience, is Pierce: half true believer and half rationalist sceptic as he pursues his researches into the mysteries of the occult and the theory that the world has changed. He will find that playing the game he has discovered has consequences. There is, of course, a price.
Drifting amongst all of these stories, as participant or audience, is Pierce: half true believer and half rationalist sceptic as he pursues his researches into the mysteries of the occult and the theory that the world has changed. He will find that playing the game he has discovered has consequences. There is, of course, a price.
June 2, 2013
Starting in a time in the future, perhaps the end, of the series before plunging backwards through time to the childhood of Pierce Moffet, Love & Sleep starts living up to its name as events are related in a dream-like sequence and super-natural beings come and go depending on whether the characters are awake or not.
Love & Sleep is the Summer Quaternary of the Aegpyt cycle. The wants and desires of the characters are established, and they now actively work towards their goal... even as the threat of Autumn looms just beyond our senses and does not take any discernible form until the end.
Perhaps the most jarring feature of the novel is the first hundred plus pages that deal with a late summer in Pierce's childhood. Those impatient to continue the story in real and imaginary times from The Solitudes may find this portion as a tedious obstruction. It is necessary structurally to embody that magical aspect of Summer where possibilities are limited only by the eventual necessity of choosing. It also fits in with how John Crowley has chosen to reveal meaning in this series, peeling a layer of skin before getting to the pulp beneath.
Once accepted, the other feature of the novel is the presence of background forces that shape where the story is going and where it is coming from. Even in the John Dee passages, some Other is shaping events towards some event that precipitates the Fall of many possible worlds and the emergence of a New Heaven and a New Earth.
Like seasons, this book passes and transitions into what will clearly be the Autumn Quaternary... but as one season/age passes into another one, there is an 'end' featuring a stunning realization by Pierce and an incredible passage involving an angelic messenger. Time marches on, and so must my reading of this series.
Love & Sleep is the Summer Quaternary of the Aegpyt cycle. The wants and desires of the characters are established, and they now actively work towards their goal... even as the threat of Autumn looms just beyond our senses and does not take any discernible form until the end.
Perhaps the most jarring feature of the novel is the first hundred plus pages that deal with a late summer in Pierce's childhood. Those impatient to continue the story in real and imaginary times from The Solitudes may find this portion as a tedious obstruction. It is necessary structurally to embody that magical aspect of Summer where possibilities are limited only by the eventual necessity of choosing. It also fits in with how John Crowley has chosen to reveal meaning in this series, peeling a layer of skin before getting to the pulp beneath.
Once accepted, the other feature of the novel is the presence of background forces that shape where the story is going and where it is coming from. Even in the John Dee passages, some Other is shaping events towards some event that precipitates the Fall of many possible worlds and the emergence of a New Heaven and a New Earth.
Like seasons, this book passes and transitions into what will clearly be the Autumn Quaternary... but as one season/age passes into another one, there is an 'end' featuring a stunning realization by Pierce and an incredible passage involving an angelic messenger. Time marches on, and so must my reading of this series.
April 5, 2008
i read this book. present tense. i have read in this book since 1994 - taking it with me for 4 vacations - opening it like some open the bible - not because it is a religious text but because i trust every page and enjoy every accidental paring of my life with random commentary/insight. of the four books in the Aegypt series, this is the one i love uncritically - still breathless, still laughing, still making notes in the margins. so - given how intensely personal the relationship has become, i cannot exactly recommend it - but i certainly hope everyone has a book like this of their own.
October 14, 2023
Rarely do I feel wholly swept away by a book, but John Crowley has done it again with his 2nd novel 'Love & Sleep' in the Aegypt Cycle. It truly is a novel whose structure is unhinged, allowing a pastoral story set in upstate New York circa 1978 to twine and tangle with the journey of 16th century royal magus, John Dee, and Giordano Bruno, master of memory and time. This is far-out shit, brilliantly scribed with emotional depths that tease the narrative without ever one info-dump. It is one of those books that reads you instead of you reading it. It has its own soft sorcery.
Yes, the winds of time take such importance here. It is not a time-travel novel, but it does feel like one. It truly is a lovely book (and series, thus far) and whether mundane of the everyday life at points (love affairs, raising children) there is a sense of widescreen, elemental power that teases us and makes the reader feel appropriately small. When books can achieve this, one has to savor and move slow. I didn't want this one to end.
Bold and bittersweet, Crowley masters the literary kitchen-sink. Conceptual holy grails, smalltown love triangles, a cult in the woods, werewolves vs. witches, angels leaving their choir, Eros personified, and even a novel within a novel as the first 190 pages are entirely about an adolescent Pierce Moffett as he finds both God and Grace in the harsh, magical lands of the Kentucky mountains.
To me, at least, some of the finest American Literature within and beyond Fantasy. Crowley is a treasure.
Yes, the winds of time take such importance here. It is not a time-travel novel, but it does feel like one. It truly is a lovely book (and series, thus far) and whether mundane of the everyday life at points (love affairs, raising children) there is a sense of widescreen, elemental power that teases us and makes the reader feel appropriately small. When books can achieve this, one has to savor and move slow. I didn't want this one to end.
Bold and bittersweet, Crowley masters the literary kitchen-sink. Conceptual holy grails, smalltown love triangles, a cult in the woods, werewolves vs. witches, angels leaving their choir, Eros personified, and even a novel within a novel as the first 190 pages are entirely about an adolescent Pierce Moffett as he finds both God and Grace in the harsh, magical lands of the Kentucky mountains.
To me, at least, some of the finest American Literature within and beyond Fantasy. Crowley is a treasure.
September 3, 2012
Inevitably a disappointment, coming after The Solitudes, which gives the quartet such a strong start. But I suspect Love and Sleep is more satisfying the second time around, when the reader has a better idea of its strengths as well as its (many) weaknesses.
The main problem is the way its parts fail to fit together into any kind of whole. The quartet probably helps one make sense of this part after one has read through the whole of it, but the first time through Love and Sleep, one finishes the book remembering a few memorable moments, and having the feeling that only toward the end did things even vaguely come together.
The long, long piece that opens the book, concerning Pierce's upbringing, is going to appeal most (perhaps only) to those with a thing for Catholic coming-of-age stories. One might have thought we already had plenty of those, but here's another, though at least its relevance does, to a degree, become apparent toward the end. As for the flashbacks to John Dee, Crowley loses his knack for these at first, and most of them in this book seem needlessly pedantic and weighed-down by excessive research. Only toward the end do the flashbacks return to the ease and grace Crowley showed with them in the first book. A tendency to state the themes and premises of the series repeatedly doesn't help either (though maybe these were what have been removed in the revised edition.)
As one moves though the book one is also, increasingly, left to wonder who on Earth this series is for. For Crowley fans, of course. But even more than the first book, this second is a very odd melding of straight-forward literary style and setting paired with Umberto Eco-like fantasy. While The Solitudes found the right balance, here the literary overwhelms the first half and the fantasy overwhelms the second. Little wonder the book failed to be the crossover success its publisher hoped it would be at the time.
There's no way around it, this is a slow, hard slog of a read, aided only by a few (too few) flashes of brilliance along the way--and the promise that the series will find itself again eventually. That again makes me think that Love and Sleep probably wears better the second time around.
The main problem is the way its parts fail to fit together into any kind of whole. The quartet probably helps one make sense of this part after one has read through the whole of it, but the first time through Love and Sleep, one finishes the book remembering a few memorable moments, and having the feeling that only toward the end did things even vaguely come together.
The long, long piece that opens the book, concerning Pierce's upbringing, is going to appeal most (perhaps only) to those with a thing for Catholic coming-of-age stories. One might have thought we already had plenty of those, but here's another, though at least its relevance does, to a degree, become apparent toward the end. As for the flashbacks to John Dee, Crowley loses his knack for these at first, and most of them in this book seem needlessly pedantic and weighed-down by excessive research. Only toward the end do the flashbacks return to the ease and grace Crowley showed with them in the first book. A tendency to state the themes and premises of the series repeatedly doesn't help either (though maybe these were what have been removed in the revised edition.)
As one moves though the book one is also, increasingly, left to wonder who on Earth this series is for. For Crowley fans, of course. But even more than the first book, this second is a very odd melding of straight-forward literary style and setting paired with Umberto Eco-like fantasy. While The Solitudes found the right balance, here the literary overwhelms the first half and the fantasy overwhelms the second. Little wonder the book failed to be the crossover success its publisher hoped it would be at the time.
There's no way around it, this is a slow, hard slog of a read, aided only by a few (too few) flashes of brilliance along the way--and the promise that the series will find itself again eventually. That again makes me think that Love and Sleep probably wears better the second time around.
March 17, 2022
About three-quarters of the way through "Love & Sleep", there's a sequence featuring Boney Rassmussen and his younger relative (and co-star of the novel) Rosie soon-to-not-be-Mucho. Boney's old and frail and his body is entering the stage where one's body reminds you that nothing lasts forever, not even you, and the curtains are going to come down on your potential tomorrows probably much sooner than you'd like. In other words: he's dying, and he's dying an old man's death where you're not necessarily dying of anything in particular except perhaps a chronic accumulation of Time. Maybe its better than just dropping dead, but there's a certain nebulous nether region you tend to occupy, acutely aware that the clock is winding down but unable to make even short-term plans so you're reduced to waiting around for something to happen. Except the "something" is by its own definition pretty final.
From some perspectives maybe it’s a peaceful way to pass one's declining days but Crowley sculpts the scene with a needle so sharp you don't even feel it go in. He whispers to Rosie, she doesn't hear. He repeats himself: "I just don't want to die," he says. "I don't want to. I don't know why I have to."
Its an ache conveyed so poignantly that you can almost feel the hollow created in your chest, only to be followed up only a few paragraphs later with an observation by Rosie trying to pin down his grief, wondering if he had made some kind of deal to avoid a job, children, marriage, even other people in the hopes that it could save his energy and extend his life. And now, near the end, she thinks, "Maybe he had, and like Midas had got what he wanted, and couldn't unwish it now."
If there's something that Crowley does for me, its this ability to get to the heart of an emotion without actually nailing any of it down, by sketching out every perimeter, detailing the gradient of every shade but the center and still leaving you with this sense of terrible precision. You know exactly what he means by this thing he won't describe directly, and it hurts.
"The Solitudes", the first book in the "Aegypt Cycle", was good, or at least it did what it had to do, which was set the scene, give us some idea of the principals and then let it all unfold with a luxurious lack of urgency. As I said, it was good, but its not the kind of good where you can give to a random person and expect them to delve deeply into it. I think you have to somewhat acquainted with Crowley in the first place before you can even start to engage what he's trying to do here, let alone try to figure out if you like how he's doing it, or how you feel about the results. In other words, you have to get your feet wet first.
However, having done that, I think you're going to find this novel a vastly richer experience than "The Solitudes" was, almost to the point where I wish he had gone for this level of intensity the first time out. Though the page count is maybe a hundred pages higher here, everything feels like more. The emotions are pitched a little higher, the prose is just a hair lusher, the observations sharper, events proceed with just a bit more intent and forward momentum.
The downside to this, obviously, is that without going through the first novel you aren't going to have the slightest clue as to who these people are or what they're about, and that's before the weird Renaissance sequences start intruding where people are talking to cryptically snarky angels in crystal balls. The basics from the first book are still the basics: Pierce Moffett is still trying to write his book about the world we know having once been a world that we don't currently know that maybe got retroactively replaced (with a little help from the writings of deceased author Fellowes Kraft and Rosie Mucho is separating from her husband and navigating what her life means as a soon to be single person. The rest of the cast mostly orbits around them as they interact with the various denizens of the town, which is as blissfully pastoral as any town you can ever imagine. Its even got its own hospital that's being slowly infiltrated by a weird religious cult! Wait, what?
As before the book has to work really hard to cause any progress in the plot when half of the protagonists are doing very little to create anything resembling a plot at all. Yes, Pierce, we're looking at you. While Rosie has to deal with her nearly-ex-husband (who doesn't do much to make a case for her staying with him), her dying relative, the lawyer trying to help her get divorced, her daughter, and almost everything else that resembles a conventional plot, Pierce mostly spends his time thinking about his book or engaging in weird thought projects.
And they are . . . odd. Partway through the novel Pierce starts a relationship with Rosie, but not the one you're thinking of . . . in the best traditions of big Russian novels we have two characters with the same name, with the second one formerly/currently the girlfriend of Rosie Mucho's husband. That's more than enough to rank high on the "huh?" scale but then Pierce seemingly decides to test out some of his magical theories on her, leading to some scenes that feel uneasily like a sort of manipulation, almost like he's trying to control her. But then not to be outdone, he starts to imagine if he had had a son by a previous girlfriend, which leads to some supremely creepy scenes where Pierce appears to be, if not testing boundaries, defining them very loosely. At times it feels like Crowley is engaged in a concerted attempt to make you turn the pages on Pierce's scenes as fast as you can.
Fortunately Crowley balances Pierce's present-day scenes with some flashbacks that are not only more engaging but at least seem to have some relevance on what the book is trying to do. Unlike the previous book where the flashbacks mostly dealt with his lovelife (such as it was) or his lifelong attempt to give himself a very lengthy resume, most of these delve back into his childhood, most of which was spent being raised with his uncle's family (his mother and father split and she went to live with her brother . . . his aunt dies not long after so it winds up being his mother, uncle and his cousins all together) in a rural portion of the country. And again, Crowley's eye for a poetic naturalism serve him well in these scenes, filtered through the sensibilities of childhood while still maintaining the feel of an unfolding history just discovering itself. With those moments centering around an incident where they shelter a young girl who ran away from home, there's a weight to the proceedings that feels more connected to the rest of the book than other flashbacks have. Maybe its an eye for detail, maybe its that the little girl has a rabidly fundamentalist grandfather convinced the end of days are upon us. Think that will tie in later? Let's just say you don't include religious folk who believe in an approaching apocalypse simply for window-dressing. Like Chekhov's rule with the gun, once people start mentioning the End Times we better start getting ominous strains of finality.
And on that note, Crowley does ramp up the tension (or at least the "uh-oh" factor) by having Rosie's ex-husband join a religious group that claims to have mystical powers and features members who are, ah, really well integrated into the scheme of things. These scenes, with a slow and creeping escalation, ground the book ever so slightly into a line of plotting we can sink our teeth into, even if we're not sure if the solution to this is going to be philosophically cosmic or involve punches being thrown.
It makes for a much denser mix already and that's before we duck in periodically into Ye Olden Times to see what hijinks those wacky moppets John Dee and Edward Kelley are up to. Much like before they're trying to/are seemingly in contact with angels but here there's a growing sense as well that Something is Changing (though again, its still Fellowes Kraft's stab at a historical novel). But for some reason the medieval scenes feel stronger and have actual to the plot at hand, for once it feels like plots are on parallel and perhaps slowly converging tracks as opposed to riding alongside each other but never actually to the side to see what the other is up to. Kelley and Dee spend much of their time wandering around Europe trying to convince royal personages that angels were telling them important things (most of these scenes appear to operate fairly close to what happened in real life as far as we know, albeit with a few fictional embellishments . . . even Kelley's wife swapping suggestions via angels is taken from history!).
Yet for all the various moving parts everything seems to be operating in lockstep and the various sections of the book are both being influenced by and informed by each other. It makes for a richer, tighter experience, without as much expository slack as the first time out. You can probably accuse it of being one you're going to think about more than feel and there are probably moments where Crowley's dense web of references can get in the way of the actual experience, unless your brain is operating on his level . . . but overall it feels like a step up in a series that started out pretty well in the first place. Considering how utterly esoteric a lot of this is, he still manages to capture something of the tug of real life, in the beginnings and the endings, the arrivals and the departures, all of it flowing by in that same subtle rhythm, just a constant accumulation of tiny changes, like a snowfall or waves caressing the sands. You can stand there without moving, steadfastly in the same world, and not realize how much has changed until its clear everything has. Maybe that includes you, maybe not. In an incremental world, how do you tell?
From some perspectives maybe it’s a peaceful way to pass one's declining days but Crowley sculpts the scene with a needle so sharp you don't even feel it go in. He whispers to Rosie, she doesn't hear. He repeats himself: "I just don't want to die," he says. "I don't want to. I don't know why I have to."
Its an ache conveyed so poignantly that you can almost feel the hollow created in your chest, only to be followed up only a few paragraphs later with an observation by Rosie trying to pin down his grief, wondering if he had made some kind of deal to avoid a job, children, marriage, even other people in the hopes that it could save his energy and extend his life. And now, near the end, she thinks, "Maybe he had, and like Midas had got what he wanted, and couldn't unwish it now."
If there's something that Crowley does for me, its this ability to get to the heart of an emotion without actually nailing any of it down, by sketching out every perimeter, detailing the gradient of every shade but the center and still leaving you with this sense of terrible precision. You know exactly what he means by this thing he won't describe directly, and it hurts.
"The Solitudes", the first book in the "Aegypt Cycle", was good, or at least it did what it had to do, which was set the scene, give us some idea of the principals and then let it all unfold with a luxurious lack of urgency. As I said, it was good, but its not the kind of good where you can give to a random person and expect them to delve deeply into it. I think you have to somewhat acquainted with Crowley in the first place before you can even start to engage what he's trying to do here, let alone try to figure out if you like how he's doing it, or how you feel about the results. In other words, you have to get your feet wet first.
However, having done that, I think you're going to find this novel a vastly richer experience than "The Solitudes" was, almost to the point where I wish he had gone for this level of intensity the first time out. Though the page count is maybe a hundred pages higher here, everything feels like more. The emotions are pitched a little higher, the prose is just a hair lusher, the observations sharper, events proceed with just a bit more intent and forward momentum.
The downside to this, obviously, is that without going through the first novel you aren't going to have the slightest clue as to who these people are or what they're about, and that's before the weird Renaissance sequences start intruding where people are talking to cryptically snarky angels in crystal balls. The basics from the first book are still the basics: Pierce Moffett is still trying to write his book about the world we know having once been a world that we don't currently know that maybe got retroactively replaced (with a little help from the writings of deceased author Fellowes Kraft and Rosie Mucho is separating from her husband and navigating what her life means as a soon to be single person. The rest of the cast mostly orbits around them as they interact with the various denizens of the town, which is as blissfully pastoral as any town you can ever imagine. Its even got its own hospital that's being slowly infiltrated by a weird religious cult! Wait, what?
As before the book has to work really hard to cause any progress in the plot when half of the protagonists are doing very little to create anything resembling a plot at all. Yes, Pierce, we're looking at you. While Rosie has to deal with her nearly-ex-husband (who doesn't do much to make a case for her staying with him), her dying relative, the lawyer trying to help her get divorced, her daughter, and almost everything else that resembles a conventional plot, Pierce mostly spends his time thinking about his book or engaging in weird thought projects.
And they are . . . odd. Partway through the novel Pierce starts a relationship with Rosie, but not the one you're thinking of . . . in the best traditions of big Russian novels we have two characters with the same name, with the second one formerly/currently the girlfriend of Rosie Mucho's husband. That's more than enough to rank high on the "huh?" scale but then Pierce seemingly decides to test out some of his magical theories on her, leading to some scenes that feel uneasily like a sort of manipulation, almost like he's trying to control her. But then not to be outdone, he starts to imagine if he had had a son by a previous girlfriend, which leads to some supremely creepy scenes where Pierce appears to be, if not testing boundaries, defining them very loosely. At times it feels like Crowley is engaged in a concerted attempt to make you turn the pages on Pierce's scenes as fast as you can.
Fortunately Crowley balances Pierce's present-day scenes with some flashbacks that are not only more engaging but at least seem to have some relevance on what the book is trying to do. Unlike the previous book where the flashbacks mostly dealt with his lovelife (such as it was) or his lifelong attempt to give himself a very lengthy resume, most of these delve back into his childhood, most of which was spent being raised with his uncle's family (his mother and father split and she went to live with her brother . . . his aunt dies not long after so it winds up being his mother, uncle and his cousins all together) in a rural portion of the country. And again, Crowley's eye for a poetic naturalism serve him well in these scenes, filtered through the sensibilities of childhood while still maintaining the feel of an unfolding history just discovering itself. With those moments centering around an incident where they shelter a young girl who ran away from home, there's a weight to the proceedings that feels more connected to the rest of the book than other flashbacks have. Maybe its an eye for detail, maybe its that the little girl has a rabidly fundamentalist grandfather convinced the end of days are upon us. Think that will tie in later? Let's just say you don't include religious folk who believe in an approaching apocalypse simply for window-dressing. Like Chekhov's rule with the gun, once people start mentioning the End Times we better start getting ominous strains of finality.
And on that note, Crowley does ramp up the tension (or at least the "uh-oh" factor) by having Rosie's ex-husband join a religious group that claims to have mystical powers and features members who are, ah, really well integrated into the scheme of things. These scenes, with a slow and creeping escalation, ground the book ever so slightly into a line of plotting we can sink our teeth into, even if we're not sure if the solution to this is going to be philosophically cosmic or involve punches being thrown.
It makes for a much denser mix already and that's before we duck in periodically into Ye Olden Times to see what hijinks those wacky moppets John Dee and Edward Kelley are up to. Much like before they're trying to/are seemingly in contact with angels but here there's a growing sense as well that Something is Changing (though again, its still Fellowes Kraft's stab at a historical novel). But for some reason the medieval scenes feel stronger and have actual to the plot at hand, for once it feels like plots are on parallel and perhaps slowly converging tracks as opposed to riding alongside each other but never actually to the side to see what the other is up to. Kelley and Dee spend much of their time wandering around Europe trying to convince royal personages that angels were telling them important things (most of these scenes appear to operate fairly close to what happened in real life as far as we know, albeit with a few fictional embellishments . . . even Kelley's wife swapping suggestions via angels is taken from history!).
Yet for all the various moving parts everything seems to be operating in lockstep and the various sections of the book are both being influenced by and informed by each other. It makes for a richer, tighter experience, without as much expository slack as the first time out. You can probably accuse it of being one you're going to think about more than feel and there are probably moments where Crowley's dense web of references can get in the way of the actual experience, unless your brain is operating on his level . . . but overall it feels like a step up in a series that started out pretty well in the first place. Considering how utterly esoteric a lot of this is, he still manages to capture something of the tug of real life, in the beginnings and the endings, the arrivals and the departures, all of it flowing by in that same subtle rhythm, just a constant accumulation of tiny changes, like a snowfall or waves caressing the sands. You can stand there without moving, steadfastly in the same world, and not realize how much has changed until its clear everything has. Maybe that includes you, maybe not. In an incremental world, how do you tell?
May 13, 2025
I think it is clear that all writers affect readers differently. And while I assume that for most people, John Crowley can be considered an acquired taste. But for me, as a general rule, I find that I tend to sink into his books and when I come up to breathe, its like I have suddenly been rudely awaken from a rather surreal dream (though some would argue ALL dreams are surreal, but be that as it may....). Mr Crowley's books tend to haunt my memory long after I have finished them in a very hallucinatory manner that makes me want to read more.
Unfortunately, that is not the case here. I had read that this was/is the most difficult of the four books of his Aegypt series,and, well, I have to agree with them. In the first volume of this series, it was following the life adventures of the main character that was so fascinating. And, unfortunately, he has been sort of sidelined in this book. Lots of, for want of a better term, peripheral stuff takes center stage here and I couldn't seem to care about it much. It made for a lot of slogging through just to get done.
I will continue through the series and hope that the rest of the books return to the high level of the first book.
Unfortunately, that is not the case here. I had read that this was/is the most difficult of the four books of his Aegypt series,and, well, I have to agree with them. In the first volume of this series, it was following the life adventures of the main character that was so fascinating. And, unfortunately, he has been sort of sidelined in this book. Lots of, for want of a better term, peripheral stuff takes center stage here and I couldn't seem to care about it much. It made for a lot of slogging through just to get done.
I will continue through the series and hope that the rest of the books return to the high level of the first book.
November 28, 2017
Near the end of Aegypt (1987) - the award-winning novel to which Love & Sleep is the sequel - John Crowley reveals to us a secret, a key to how meaning is conveyed in "legendary narratives": " ... not logical development as much as thematic repetition, the same ideas or events or even the same objects recurring in different circumstances, or different objects contained in similar circumstances ... the pattern continues until a kind of certainty arises, a satisfaction that the story has been told often enough to seem at last to have been really told … logical completion belongs to a later, more sophisticated kind of literature" (pp. 360-361).
By these criteria, the narrative thus far comprised of Aegypt and Love & Sleep is eminently legendary, though one may quibble with whether it tells its story often enough, or perhaps too often for that "kind of certainty" to have arisen; indeed, one is left to wonder whether the real secret behind the secret is that certainty of any kind is simply inaccessible in a story of this kind. We have, on the one hand, a writing style so superb that I often couldn't get through a page without pausing three or four times to contemplate a cascade of ramifications; we have, on the other hand, a story so unstructured, so thin, inherent, inexplicit most of the time, that I often felt I held in my hands a tour-de-force of writing in search of a story. But of that I may be no more certain than I am of the plot of the story. The premise, presented clearly enough in Aegypt and Love & Sleep, is that our world, our universe, may once have run not on atoms and their insensate reactions but on the sensibilities of angels. We find traces of the angelic regime in cherubs that adorn our places of worship and Valentine cards, caricaturistic icons of beings who once quite literally took an active hand in human affairs, and could be appealed to by knowledgeable people to intercede on their behalf. Our soupçon of knowledge about this 'Aegyptian' realm in contrast to the Egyptian, which is the realm we know via our scientific history, comes to us in the first novel primarily through the spiritual pilgrimage of Pierce Moffett, a professor on the edge of burnout who escapes from New York to trees and rivers and quaint seedy rest havens on the other side of the Hudson. There he finds not only fresh air and quiet, but entry to a foundation devoted in part to cataloguing the work of one Fellows Kraft, a fictitious writer loved by Moffett as a boy, and whose interest in Giordano Bruno (the monk who in real history was burned at the stake in 1600 for his assertion that the stars in the sky were actually suns around which planets might revolve) turns out to coincide with Moffett's interest in the end of the angelic era en Earth. This dawn of the 17th century was indeed a pivotal time in history (McLuhan sees it as the coming of age of the first series of impacts of the printing press in Western Europe), peopled not only by Bruno but Shakespeare and the Elizabethan metaphysician John Dee, and Crowley provides delicious peeks at what they might have said and done, via his own voice and Kraft's. But the locus of the story is Moffett, a hero instantly lovable to authors if only because he believes he can make a difference in the world by writing a book, and if the end of Aegypt leaves him involved in some way with two women named Rose, or maybe they're the same, and only fractionally if at all closer to grasping what the realm of angels is/was all about, well, as Crowley himself might say, Well…
[review continues here]: https://paullevinson.blogspot.com/201...
By these criteria, the narrative thus far comprised of Aegypt and Love & Sleep is eminently legendary, though one may quibble with whether it tells its story often enough, or perhaps too often for that "kind of certainty" to have arisen; indeed, one is left to wonder whether the real secret behind the secret is that certainty of any kind is simply inaccessible in a story of this kind. We have, on the one hand, a writing style so superb that I often couldn't get through a page without pausing three or four times to contemplate a cascade of ramifications; we have, on the other hand, a story so unstructured, so thin, inherent, inexplicit most of the time, that I often felt I held in my hands a tour-de-force of writing in search of a story. But of that I may be no more certain than I am of the plot of the story. The premise, presented clearly enough in Aegypt and Love & Sleep, is that our world, our universe, may once have run not on atoms and their insensate reactions but on the sensibilities of angels. We find traces of the angelic regime in cherubs that adorn our places of worship and Valentine cards, caricaturistic icons of beings who once quite literally took an active hand in human affairs, and could be appealed to by knowledgeable people to intercede on their behalf. Our soupçon of knowledge about this 'Aegyptian' realm in contrast to the Egyptian, which is the realm we know via our scientific history, comes to us in the first novel primarily through the spiritual pilgrimage of Pierce Moffett, a professor on the edge of burnout who escapes from New York to trees and rivers and quaint seedy rest havens on the other side of the Hudson. There he finds not only fresh air and quiet, but entry to a foundation devoted in part to cataloguing the work of one Fellows Kraft, a fictitious writer loved by Moffett as a boy, and whose interest in Giordano Bruno (the monk who in real history was burned at the stake in 1600 for his assertion that the stars in the sky were actually suns around which planets might revolve) turns out to coincide with Moffett's interest in the end of the angelic era en Earth. This dawn of the 17th century was indeed a pivotal time in history (McLuhan sees it as the coming of age of the first series of impacts of the printing press in Western Europe), peopled not only by Bruno but Shakespeare and the Elizabethan metaphysician John Dee, and Crowley provides delicious peeks at what they might have said and done, via his own voice and Kraft's. But the locus of the story is Moffett, a hero instantly lovable to authors if only because he believes he can make a difference in the world by writing a book, and if the end of Aegypt leaves him involved in some way with two women named Rose, or maybe they're the same, and only fractionally if at all closer to grasping what the realm of angels is/was all about, well, as Crowley himself might say, Well…
[review continues here]: https://paullevinson.blogspot.com/201...
September 16, 2021
John Crowley holds a special place in my reading heart. I count LITTLE, BIG as one of my all-time favorite books. So when I saw a used copy of LOVE AND SLEEP for sale, I grabbed it, even though it's the second volume in a series.
Alas, I couldn't make heads or tails of this story. It's full of gorgeous language, stunning insights, and intriguing metaphysical and spiritual theories, but ultimately I found it incoherent, mysterious and confusing. I actually enjoyed reading the novel - I kept hoping for some clarity among the startling visions - but that never came.
I don't think the problem is due to picking up the story in the middle of a series. Perhaps I'm just not subtle and clever enough to figure out what was going on. Or perhaps the fact that I generally read before bed, when I'm tired, meant that my mind wasn't sharp enough to follow Crowley's metaphorical leaps.
Sigh. Somehow I feel that I've really missed something wonderful.
Alas, I couldn't make heads or tails of this story. It's full of gorgeous language, stunning insights, and intriguing metaphysical and spiritual theories, but ultimately I found it incoherent, mysterious and confusing. I actually enjoyed reading the novel - I kept hoping for some clarity among the startling visions - but that never came.
I don't think the problem is due to picking up the story in the middle of a series. Perhaps I'm just not subtle and clever enough to figure out what was going on. Or perhaps the fact that I generally read before bed, when I'm tired, meant that my mind wasn't sharp enough to follow Crowley's metaphorical leaps.
Sigh. Somehow I feel that I've really missed something wonderful.
November 30, 2014
As many other reviewers have pointed out, Love and Sleep occasionally feels sluggish, irrelevant, disjointed. Its John Dee chapters seem sapped of the magic that inhabited them in The Solitudes, and the portions near the end of the book develop some momentum suddenly, but in a really disorienting way. The book fails to feel like a coherent whole despite its incessant synchronicity and recursion.
However, Crowley's skills and joys are far from absent. His unmatched ability to invoke arcane sorts of nostalgia, or childhood misapprehension and imagination, things that are experienced as deeply intimate but are in fact socially universal, is consistently thrilling. The magic in the first part of the book comes largely from Pierce's childhood understanding of history (an important building block of the larger series Theme), communicated in a way that reminded me of the magic in piecing together a vague idea of history from Classical busts and maps and placeless names, and how that was gradually overprinted, not erased, by a more prosaic version of the world. The magic element in the second half of the book is much less clear, and a bunch of somewhat strange things happen – though nothing I'd feel justified calling magical realism, in any sense. Things that will likely make more sense as the series concludes.
Even after it's become clear that synchronicity and recursion are simply things Crowley does for his own pleasure, something that you come to expect in his books, there's still a little rush every time you pick up on one of these cross-references, even when Crowley goes on to point them out in the text. These synchronicities occur across the miniature worlds Crowley has established, somehow compartmentalized despite their inextricable linkages – John Dee's chapters are part of a novel Pierce is/was reading, but the relationship between the progress in each seems to have no relation to the times Pierce actually reads the book.
Crowley's prose is neither lyrical nor spare, but it has a unique beauty of its own that made Love and Sleep, for me, more a pleasure than a slog to read. Maybe I just read fast, but I felt that the reminders of things that happened in book 1 were sparse (though unsubtle) and not obtrusive. They helped me remember elements that had fallen out of my story-head even in the few days since I read the first.
However, Crowley's skills and joys are far from absent. His unmatched ability to invoke arcane sorts of nostalgia, or childhood misapprehension and imagination, things that are experienced as deeply intimate but are in fact socially universal, is consistently thrilling. The magic in the first part of the book comes largely from Pierce's childhood understanding of history (an important building block of the larger series Theme), communicated in a way that reminded me of the magic in piecing together a vague idea of history from Classical busts and maps and placeless names, and how that was gradually overprinted, not erased, by a more prosaic version of the world. The magic element in the second half of the book is much less clear, and a bunch of somewhat strange things happen – though nothing I'd feel justified calling magical realism, in any sense. Things that will likely make more sense as the series concludes.
Even after it's become clear that synchronicity and recursion are simply things Crowley does for his own pleasure, something that you come to expect in his books, there's still a little rush every time you pick up on one of these cross-references, even when Crowley goes on to point them out in the text. These synchronicities occur across the miniature worlds Crowley has established, somehow compartmentalized despite their inextricable linkages – John Dee's chapters are part of a novel Pierce is/was reading, but the relationship between the progress in each seems to have no relation to the times Pierce actually reads the book.
Crowley's prose is neither lyrical nor spare, but it has a unique beauty of its own that made Love and Sleep, for me, more a pleasure than a slog to read. Maybe I just read fast, but I felt that the reminders of things that happened in book 1 were sparse (though unsubtle) and not obtrusive. They helped me remember elements that had fallen out of my story-head even in the few days since I read the first.
June 6, 2015
More transitional than interesting in itself. I may judge it differently after reading the series as a whole.
March 1, 2021
It took me thirteen goddamned years to finish this book.
I've already read the first book twice and the last time several years ago. Love love loved it, and every time I started the second book I would enter into 150 pages about Pierce Moffett's damn childhood. Totally derailed me, again and again. Somehow I decided that NOW was the time, and it was the time after all!
The magic of this book is in continuation and it doesn't exactly stand up on its own. The plot is not so much; it's the Work that is important.
I've read some reviews online that talk about
I've already read the first book twice and the last time several years ago. Love love loved it, and every time I started the second book I would enter into 150 pages about Pierce Moffett's damn childhood. Totally derailed me, again and again. Somehow I decided that NOW was the time, and it was the time after all!
The magic of this book is in continuation and it doesn't exactly stand up on its own. The plot is not so much; it's the Work that is important.
I've read some reviews online that talk about
March 31, 2022
Didn't think this one would end up in the DNF pile, but it turns out no matter how much I am liking your series, if out of nowhere the adult protagonist decides to invent an imaginary son, and then imagines an incestuous sexual relationship with that imaginary son, I am just not going to be able to keep reading the book. I don't know WHAT was going on here, but it should have stayed in the author's therapy sessions.
December 25, 2025
Now that I've finally set aside time to read Aegypt, I can see it becoming an all time favorite sequence of novels-- with Love and Sleep now finished, I am halfway through.
Crowley is astonishing as always.
Crowley is astonishing as always.
April 28, 2023
In big novels, and Crowley's Aegipet is a two-thousand-page epic novel, the moment inevitably comes when the reader's interest weakens. I had it at the end of the second book: everything. it seems good, but tired. Maybe because the proportion of astrology dear to the heart is significantly inferior to alchemy here, in which I understand very little. Maybe, with a declared dislike for love affairs, she is more susceptible to the matchmaker complex (to marry everyone) than she expected: and why is Rosie, who was appointed by me to be Pierce's lover, not with him, but with him a slut Rose? Maybe the sound of homoerotic and especially incestuous motives, which my puritanical component is difficult to accept, suddenly increases? Anyway, I pulled the ending of "Love and Sleep" at a tired trot (knowing for sure that I would read the third book, and the fourth, not translated, too) just the time of the decline of interest, it needs to wait out.
But this kind of attenuation gives a sober, detached. not befuddled by the elvish glamour of falling in love, a look with the ability to sort out the impressions of the book, as much as possible, to build its chronology. I happened to see in one of the reviews an attack on the translator: there are too many comments, what do you take us for fools? I feel obliged to stand up, the translation by Lyudmila Brilova and Vasily Temnov is stunningly good. Crowley is a very difficult author to understand, and it is sometimes more difficult to read him in the original than Pynchon and Saunders. Pieces that are completely transparent to understanding are replaced by metaphorically and allusively overcomplicated with the complete impossibility of taking the missing meaning out of context, and therefore, the work of translators who not only gave the Russian reader the fascinating melody of this text, but also explained the realities far from us as much as possible, is akin to a feat. I will say about myself that I was happy to do something that I almost never did (except for "Ulysses")I didn't do it - I read the comments to the first or second book, which occupy a sixth part of the volume of the two-volume book and learned a lot of new things.
Among other things, the translators have built a chronology of the book, in which the starting point is the figure of Pierce Moffett. In the review of the first book, I had the imprudence to incorrectly characterize Pierce's childhood as spent with his father - I am correcting myself, his parents were divorced and the boy lived with his mother with his uncle for most of his childhood, communicating with his children. To be fair, "Loneliness" says a lot about the relationship with the father and almost nothing about the mother. Besides. that she left. So, it was Axel who was the "vacation" dad. The hero spent most of his childhood in his uncle's family and the role of Winnie (mom) in his life is vanishingly small, much less than that of Sister Mary Philomela, a nun who looked after the children. It is to her that Pierce owes his hardcore Catholic upbringing and the symbols of faith, which were not squeezed out after either skepticism, or scholarly studies, or an obvious penchant for pantheism.
In general, the ordinary life of fairly well-off and status (no frills) children. The widower father and his careless sister have been granted a little more freedom than is usually the case, but not excessively. Sometimes Uncle Sam Oliphant's sardonic skepticism can be too prickly, but never to such an extent as to really deeply hurt children's souls. Sister Hildy Bird and brother Joe Boyd, Uncle Sam's children and the main figures of Pierce's childhood. The key moment of which, it seems to me, was the episode with Bobby Shaftoe. Well, who else doubted the influence of "Aegyptus" on Stevenson's "Baroque Cycle"? A little ragamuffin came to their house at a time when the adults were away. entrusting the care of the children to Mousie. indeed, something like a mouse. A distant relative of the latter, who did not want to live with her grandfather after the death of her parents, was immediately expelled, but did not go far, wandered around the house.
О скитаниях вечных и о Земле
Некоторое средство, при помощи которого те,кто кормится смыслом, как хлебом, могли бы определить, где действительно новое, а где лишь старые грезы,от которых человечество никогда полностью не пробуждалось или не знало, что пробудилось. Ведь тот. кто не знает, что проснулся, обречен спать.
В больших романах, а "Эгипет" Краули роман-эпопея на две тысячи страниц, неминуемо настает момент, когда читательский интерес слабеет. У меня он пришелся на финал второй книги: все. вроде, хорошо, а утомило. Может оттого, что удельный вес милой сердцу астрологии значительно уступает здесь алхимии, в которой совсем мало смыслю. Может, при декларируемой неприязни к любовным романам, комплексу свахи (всех переженить) подвержена больше, чем ожидала: и почему назначенная мной в возлюбленные Пирсу Рози не с ним, а с ним шлюховатая Роуз? Может неожиданно усиливается звучание гомоэротических и особенно инцестуальных мотивов, которых моей пуританской составляющей трудно принять? Так или иначе,концовку "Любви и сна" тянула усталой рысью (точно зная, что третью книгу стану читать, и четвертую, не переведенную, тоже) просто время спада интереса, его нужно переждать.
Зато такого рода затухания дают трезвый, отстраненный. не одурманенный эльфийским гламуром влюбленности взгляд с возможностью разложить по полочкам впечатления от книги, сколько возможно, выстроить ее хронологию. Мне довелось видеть в одной из рецензий выпад в адрес переводчика: слишком-де много комментариев, что вы нас, за дураков держите? Чувствую себя обязанной вступиться, перевод Людмилы Бриловой и Василия Темнова потрясающе хорош. Краули очень непростой для понимания автор, а читать его в оригинале местами труднее, чем Пинчона и Сондерса. Совершенно прозрачные для понимания куски сменяются метафорически и аллюзивно переусложненными с совершенной невозможностью взять недостающий смысл из контекста, а потому, труд переводчиков, которые не только подарили русскому читателю завораживающую напевность этого текста, но также и максимально объяснили далекие от нас реалии, сродни подвигу. О себе скажу, что с удовольствием сделала то, чего почти никогда (кроме "Улисса")не делала - прочла комментарии к первой-второй книге, занимающие шестую часть от объема двухтомника и узнала много нового.
В числе прочего, переводчиками выстроена хронология книги, в которой отправной точкой фигура Пирса Моффета. В отзыве на первую книгу я имела неосторожность неверно охарактеризовать детство Пирса, как проведенное с отцом - исправляюсь, родители были в разводе и большую часть детства мальчик прожил с матерью у дяди, общаясь с его детьми. Справедливости ради в "Одиночестве" много говорится об отношениях с отцом и почти ничего о матери. Кроме того. что уехала. Так вот, это Аксель был "каникулярным" папой. Большую часть детства герой провел в семье дяди и роль Винни (мамы) в его жизни исчезающе мала, куда меньше, чем у сестры Мэри Филомелы, монахини, присматривавшей за детьми. Именно ей Пирс обязан хардкорно католическим воспитанием и символами веры, не потесненными после ни скептицизмом, ни учеными штудиями, ни явной склонностью к пантеизму.
В целом обычная жизнь довольно обеспеченных и статусных (без излишеств) детей. Свободы вдовцом-отцом и его беспечной сестрой им предоставлено чуть больше, чем это бывает обычно, но не чрезмерно. Иногда сардонический скептицизм дяди Сэма Олифанта бывает чересчур колок, но никогда до такой степени, чтобы по-настоящему глубоко ранить детские души. Сестра Хильди Бёрд и брат Джо Бойд, дети дяди Сэма и главные фигуры пирсова детства. Ключевым моментом которого, мне так представляется, явился эпизод с Бобби Шафто. Ну, кто там еще сомневался во влиянии "Эгипта" на "Барочный цикл" Стивенсона? Маленькая оборванка явилась в их дом во время, когда взрослые были в отъезде. препоручив заботы о детях Мауси. впрямь чем-то похожей на мышь. Дальняя родственница последней, не пожелавшая жить с дедом после смерти родителей, была тут же изгнана, но далеко не ушла,бродила вокруг дома.
Бобби - это такая Сиротка Энни (знакомая всякому американцу, но совершенно незнакомая нам) шиворот-навыворот. Дети приводят ее в дом, потихоньку от Мауси, кормят, выслушивают ее странные истории, потом девочка заболевает лихорадкой, едва не умерев и успев заразить Пирса, перенесшего болезнь в легкой форме. По счастью, вернувшийся дядя Сэм, врач, лечит Бобби, после чего ее отправляют в дом деда. Но первое острое сексуальное переживание Пирса связано именно с Бобби и оно, наверно, наложило отпечаток на всю дальнейшую его жизнь с ее простотой, странностями и предпочтениями.
О семье Шафто стоит сказать еще несколько слов. С ними тесно связаны темы оборотничества, ведьмовства и вечного противостояния этих темных сил в подлунном мире. Не буду вдаваться в подробности, но вплетает эти нити в ткань своего полотна автор мастерски. Как, впрочем, все, что он делает. Ну вот, как-то много написалось и надо бы уже заканчивать, а о современности ничего не рассказала. и темы средневековья с Джордано Бруно, Джоном Ди, императором Рудольфом даже и не коснулась. Может еще вернусь к разговору об этой книге.Непременно вернусь, как стану рассказывать о следующих.
But this kind of attenuation gives a sober, detached. not befuddled by the elvish glamour of falling in love, a look with the ability to sort out the impressions of the book, as much as possible, to build its chronology. I happened to see in one of the reviews an attack on the translator: there are too many comments, what do you take us for fools? I feel obliged to stand up, the translation by Lyudmila Brilova and Vasily Temnov is stunningly good. Crowley is a very difficult author to understand, and it is sometimes more difficult to read him in the original than Pynchon and Saunders. Pieces that are completely transparent to understanding are replaced by metaphorically and allusively overcomplicated with the complete impossibility of taking the missing meaning out of context, and therefore, the work of translators who not only gave the Russian reader the fascinating melody of this text, but also explained the realities far from us as much as possible, is akin to a feat. I will say about myself that I was happy to do something that I almost never did (except for "Ulysses")I didn't do it - I read the comments to the first or second book, which occupy a sixth part of the volume of the two-volume book and learned a lot of new things.
Among other things, the translators have built a chronology of the book, in which the starting point is the figure of Pierce Moffett. In the review of the first book, I had the imprudence to incorrectly characterize Pierce's childhood as spent with his father - I am correcting myself, his parents were divorced and the boy lived with his mother with his uncle for most of his childhood, communicating with his children. To be fair, "Loneliness" says a lot about the relationship with the father and almost nothing about the mother. Besides. that she left. So, it was Axel who was the "vacation" dad. The hero spent most of his childhood in his uncle's family and the role of Winnie (mom) in his life is vanishingly small, much less than that of Sister Mary Philomela, a nun who looked after the children. It is to her that Pierce owes his hardcore Catholic upbringing and the symbols of faith, which were not squeezed out after either skepticism, or scholarly studies, or an obvious penchant for pantheism.
In general, the ordinary life of fairly well-off and status (no frills) children. The widower father and his careless sister have been granted a little more freedom than is usually the case, but not excessively. Sometimes Uncle Sam Oliphant's sardonic skepticism can be too prickly, but never to such an extent as to really deeply hurt children's souls. Sister Hildy Bird and brother Joe Boyd, Uncle Sam's children and the main figures of Pierce's childhood. The key moment of which, it seems to me, was the episode with Bobby Shaftoe. Well, who else doubted the influence of "Aegyptus" on Stevenson's "Baroque Cycle"? A little ragamuffin came to their house at a time when the adults were away. entrusting the care of the children to Mousie. indeed, something like a mouse. A distant relative of the latter, who did not want to live with her grandfather after the death of her parents, was immediately expelled, but did not go far, wandered around the house.
О скитаниях вечных и о Земле
Некоторое средство, при помощи которого те,кто кормится смыслом, как хлебом, могли бы определить, где действительно новое, а где лишь старые грезы,от которых человечество никогда полностью не пробуждалось или не знало, что пробудилось. Ведь тот. кто не знает, что проснулся, обречен спать.
В больших романах, а "Эгипет" Краули роман-эпопея на две тысячи страниц, неминуемо настает момент, когда читательский интерес слабеет. У меня он пришелся на финал второй книги: все. вроде, хорошо, а утомило. Может оттого, что удельный вес милой сердцу астрологии значительно уступает здесь алхимии, в которой совсем мало смыслю. Может, при декларируемой неприязни к любовным романам, комплексу свахи (всех переженить) подвержена больше, чем ожидала: и почему назначенная мной в возлюбленные Пирсу Рози не с ним, а с ним шлюховатая Роуз? Может неожиданно усиливается звучание гомоэротических и особенно инцестуальных мотивов, которых моей пуританской составляющей трудно принять? Так или иначе,концовку "Любви и сна" тянула усталой рысью (точно зная, что третью книгу стану читать, и четвертую, не переведенную, тоже) просто время спада интереса, его нужно переждать.
Зато такого рода затухания дают трезвый, отстраненный. не одурманенный эльфийским гламуром влюбленности взгляд с возможностью разложить по полочкам впечатления от книги, сколько возможно, выстроить ее хронологию. Мне довелось видеть в одной из рецензий выпад в адрес переводчика: слишком-де много комментариев, что вы нас, за дураков держите? Чувствую себя обязанной вступиться, перевод Людмилы Бриловой и Василия Темнова потрясающе хорош. Краули очень непростой для понимания автор, а читать его в оригинале местами труднее, чем Пинчона и Сондерса. Совершенно прозрачные для понимания куски сменяются метафорически и аллюзивно переусложненными с совершенной невозможностью взять недостающий смысл из контекста, а потому, труд переводчиков, которые не только подарили русскому читателю завораживающую напевность этого текста, но также и максимально объяснили далекие от нас реалии, сродни подвигу. О себе скажу, что с удовольствием сделала то, чего почти никогда (кроме "Улисса")не делала - прочла комментарии к первой-второй книге, занимающие шестую часть от объема двухтомника и узнала много нового.
В числе прочего, переводчиками выстроена хронология книги, в которой отправной точкой фигура Пирса Моффета. В отзыве на первую книгу я имела неосторожность неверно охарактеризовать детство Пирса, как проведенное с отцом - исправляюсь, родители были в разводе и большую часть детства мальчик прожил с матерью у дяди, общаясь с его детьми. Справедливости ради в "Одиночестве" много говорится об отношениях с отцом и почти ничего о матери. Кроме того. что уехала. Так вот, это Аксель был "каникулярным" папой. Большую часть детства герой провел в семье дяди и роль Винни (мамы) в его жизни исчезающе мала, куда меньше, чем у сестры Мэри Филомелы, монахини, присматривавшей за детьми. Именно ей Пирс обязан хардкорно католическим воспитанием и символами веры, не потесненными после ни скептицизмом, ни учеными штудиями, ни явной склонностью к пантеизму.
В целом обычная жизнь довольно обеспеченных и статусных (без излишеств) детей. Свободы вдовцом-отцом и его беспечной сестрой им предоставлено чуть больше, чем это бывает обычно, но не чрезмерно. Иногда сардонический скептицизм дяди Сэма Олифанта бывает чересчур колок, но никогда до такой степени, чтобы по-настоящему глубоко ранить детские души. Сестра Хильди Бёрд и брат Джо Бойд, дети дяди Сэма и главные фигуры пирсова детства. Ключевым моментом которого, мне так представляется, явился эпизод с Бобби Шафто. Ну, кто там еще сомневался во влиянии "Эгипта" на "Барочный цикл" Стивенсона? Маленькая оборванка явилась в их дом во время, когда взрослые были в отъезде. препоручив заботы о детях Мауси. впрямь чем-то похожей на мышь. Дальняя родственница последней, не пожелавшая жить с дедом после смерти родителей, была тут же изгнана, но далеко не ушла,бродила вокруг дома.
Бобби - это такая Сиротка Энни (знакомая всякому американцу, но совершенно незнакомая нам) шиворот-навыворот. Дети приводят ее в дом, потихоньку от Мауси, кормят, выслушивают ее странные истории, потом девочка заболевает лихорадкой, едва не умерев и успев заразить Пирса, перенесшего болезнь в легкой форме. По счастью, вернувшийся дядя Сэм, врач, лечит Бобби, после чего ее отправляют в дом деда. Но первое острое сексуальное переживание Пирса связано именно с Бобби и оно, наверно, наложило отпечаток на всю дальнейшую его жизнь с ее простотой, странностями и предпочтениями.
О семье Шафто стоит сказать еще несколько слов. С ними тесно связаны темы оборотничества, ведьмовства и вечного противостояния этих темных сил в подлунном мире. Не буду вдаваться в подробности, но вплетает эти нити в ткань своего полотна автор мастерски. Как, впрочем, все, что он делает. Ну вот, как-то много написалось и надо бы уже заканчивать, а о современности ничего не рассказала. и темы средневековья с Джордано Бруно, Джоном Ди, императором Рудольфом даже и не коснулась. Может еще вернусь к разговору об этой книге.Непременно вернусь, как стану рассказывать о следующих.
December 9, 2017
I loved this book. First for its poetry, and for the trail of allusions to follow... stones and mining, fires and fevers, roses, dogs and werewolves, to name just a few. I loved the characters from Bruno to Rosie to Pierce. (Yes, the story is disjointed--that's kind of the point. Yes, a lot of the story is internal to the characters. I'm completely happy to be patient when the writing is so good.)
I loved it for the ideas about shifting time, about love as magic, about good and evil. Crowley is exceptional at nuance and sustained tension, a philosopher poet. I'm excited to read the next two books.
I loved it for the ideas about shifting time, about love as magic, about good and evil. Crowley is exceptional at nuance and sustained tension, a philosopher poet. I'm excited to read the next two books.
January 31, 2008
This series is like a best friend. I forget how much I love it and how much of myself I wrapped around it until I go back and open my eyes to its familiarity. I will write a real review someday (perhaps when I finish the series) but for now I don't really have words just warm feelings! Amazing…
October 10, 2018
The time is out of joint. O cursèd spiteI am disturbed that Crowley, between Aegypt and Love & Sleep, has apparently forgotten how old Pierce Moffett is. On Pierce's last birthday in New York City before moving upstate to Blackbury Jambs, Crowley states "He was thirty-four years old." (Aegypt, 240) The following summer, as Pierce contemplates Mike Mucho's / Rose Ryder's theory of Climacterics, "he had turned thirty-five in December," (L&S, 396).
That ever I was born to set it right!
Other evidence for the dates of the action: Pierce "had been conceived early in 1942" (Aegypt, 69), and, in a seeming address to the reader concerning the symbolic wind storm that seems to blow into the novel from the 16th century, "Don't you remember the wind of that late summer, September of 1976, or was it '77, the night it blew so long and so universally?" (L&S, 479, if Pierce were indeed 35, it would be 1978).
It bothers me that a writer who writes as elliptically as Crowley, who sometimes conveys significant events by the dropping of subtle hints rather than explicit statement, should be so cavalier or negligent of such details as this. I feel the author has put a burden of close attention on me as a reader and, after keeping my part of this implied bargain, think of this as a kind of betrayal.
Other than that sour taste, I enjoyed this novel pretty much as well as its predecessor. While I noted that Aegypt was barely a novel, Love and Sleep opens with a well constructed traditional narrative, an account of Pierce's childhood in the Kentucky hills which could be read as a stand alone novella. It's an account of a Catholic family's life amid Fundamentalist hillbillies - Flannery O'Connor material in a way, but without her Southern Gothic grotesques. Also, unlike many of O'Connor's tales, I never got the feeling that the characters' strings were being pulled by unseen allegorical figures representing Grace, Sin, and Redemption.
The novel also continues the novel-within-a-novel about John Dee and Giordano Bruno - here we get, among other events, some Tudor court intrigue, a staple of the historical novel. Though the nominal author of this is the fictional Fellowes Kraft, the story serves here more as narrative counterpoint to "present day" events than it did in the earlier novel. We learn a little more, very little, about Kraft's life.
The end of the novel seems a bit tattered, with events not fully fleshed out. Pierce is in Florida visiting his mother in the winter of 1977-78, devastated by a failed love affair with Rose Ryder. We saw this in its beginnings, but the vast emotional weight Pierce has invested in it has to be taken on faith - Crowley tells but doesn't show in this case. (Crowley strongly indicates that Pierce is infatuated by an inner imago rather than the actual woman; but, while I found this believable given that my own reaction to Rose was tepid at best, the author still hasn't given us that process in action).
Related to Pierce's romantic problems and equally sketchy in substance is the presence of a Christian cult of faith healers at The Woods, a psychiatric clinic where Rose works. Again, the beginnings of this development are shown, as it were, in the background as the narrative progressed and near the end we see an influential cult member perform a kind of exorcism on one of the patients at the clinic. But Rose's seduction into the cult is presented to us without any scenes showing it happen.
There are several passages describing mystical visions, both in the present day and historical sections, that didn't work for me. The worst was a passage in which Beau Bachman, a guru-like figure, is listening to "an oceanic Mahler symphony" on headphones while meditating or having an out-of-body experience, which is described in the form of a dialogue-less film script. Crowley is imprecise in his musical descriptions so what we get is a kind of blurred impression of the Mahler sound rather than any single identifiable work. At the end
Beau was borne out over the sleeping Faraways on a single soprano voice, singing liltingly and sorrowfully without words, borne weightless between the sky powdered with stars and the hills' green labial folds.Well, that's nice but it's not Mahler. It would have made more sense in terms of the novel's themes if he had been listening to The Planets. During this 4 page passage, I found myself nodding off, which is perhaps what is meant by "Hypnotic" in the cover blurb from the Chicago Tribune.
November 4, 2022
“He experienced, and not for the first time this week, this winter, the sensation that he was simply creating the story backward from this moment, reasons and all. But isn’t that what memory is always doing? Making bricks without straw, mortaring them in place one by one into a so-called past, a labyrinth actually, in which to hide a monster, or a monstrosity?”
“This was the problem, she thought: that you might sometimes want to get away from love, might try to break the bond or at least tug on it to make it slacken. Only to find. That was what was hardest, for a heart like hers, not that you could not love or give love but that you couldn’t avoid it, couldn’t ever get out of the standing wind of love all around you, find shelter from it…What parents knew about love and couldn’t tell other people, who thought it was a project or an enterprise, a passion, a contest you won or lost. It wasn’t. It was more like a wind, a steady wind, a wind you could not stand out of. Love. She wanted to make a painting, a painting of love, of people, a family, living and at work say, but all of them standing in that constant and invisible wind. But of course you couldn’t do it. Because how could you paint an invisible wind?”
“Love & Sleep” is an apt title for the second volume of Crowley’s weirdo-historical-fantasy-philosophy. We start at the end before plunging back to the beginning and then catch back on the thread of “The Solitudes”—what I mean is the start of the book feels like a non sequitur and we don’t find out how it connects until the very end; then we go into an extended sequence on Pierce’s childhood that sets the stage for a lot of the explorations we go on in “The Solitudes;” and then we’re back to “the main story” of Rosie and Pierce and his book. Much of what happens concerns “love” as a concept and the rest feels extremely dreamlike and eerie.
There were moments that I felt like the whole damn book was about to crack open and go full fantasy and those were, of course, some of the best. Maybe magic is real after all! Maybe it’s more than just an outlook or a perception! Or maybe we’re all just weaving webs of delusion. More so than in “The Solitudes” I felt bogged down and lost. It took me almost 3-weeks to read because I kept taking breaks, but I was still compelled (am still!) to finish the series. I feel, like Pierce, that I’m on the precipice of unlocking something crazy and wild and I’ll keep on keeping on.
“This was the problem, she thought: that you might sometimes want to get away from love, might try to break the bond or at least tug on it to make it slacken. Only to find. That was what was hardest, for a heart like hers, not that you could not love or give love but that you couldn’t avoid it, couldn’t ever get out of the standing wind of love all around you, find shelter from it…What parents knew about love and couldn’t tell other people, who thought it was a project or an enterprise, a passion, a contest you won or lost. It wasn’t. It was more like a wind, a steady wind, a wind you could not stand out of. Love. She wanted to make a painting, a painting of love, of people, a family, living and at work say, but all of them standing in that constant and invisible wind. But of course you couldn’t do it. Because how could you paint an invisible wind?”
“Love & Sleep” is an apt title for the second volume of Crowley’s weirdo-historical-fantasy-philosophy. We start at the end before plunging back to the beginning and then catch back on the thread of “The Solitudes”—what I mean is the start of the book feels like a non sequitur and we don’t find out how it connects until the very end; then we go into an extended sequence on Pierce’s childhood that sets the stage for a lot of the explorations we go on in “The Solitudes;” and then we’re back to “the main story” of Rosie and Pierce and his book. Much of what happens concerns “love” as a concept and the rest feels extremely dreamlike and eerie.
There were moments that I felt like the whole damn book was about to crack open and go full fantasy and those were, of course, some of the best. Maybe magic is real after all! Maybe it’s more than just an outlook or a perception! Or maybe we’re all just weaving webs of delusion. More so than in “The Solitudes” I felt bogged down and lost. It took me almost 3-weeks to read because I kept taking breaks, but I was still compelled (am still!) to finish the series. I feel, like Pierce, that I’m on the precipice of unlocking something crazy and wild and I’ll keep on keeping on.
May 10, 2021
the heartwarming story of a fictional character trying to write a fictional book that's about exactly the same thing the actual book's about but luckily for the fictional author (whose name is pierce and who keeps falling in love with girls named rose, unsubtle but hey whatever) he finds a finished book that's basically the book he needs to write (finished book was written by fellowes kraft, fellow's craft, get it? do you get it? isn't this great?) and the world's a monad, right? continually and perfectly becoming itself, right? so the process of writing the actual physical book-you-are-holding, which you are forced to contemplate because you're reading about the process of writing the fictional book, and the story in fellowes kraft's book (which is, naturally, about an attempt to create the philosopher's stone i.e. the whole self, the great work, yada yada) and of course brief glimpses into kraft's own creative process are juxtaposed to really hammer crowley's metaphysical point about the infinitely large/small changeable/unchangeable same-river-but-never-the-same-river monadic nature of our existence home. isn't that great? if you don't think it's great, you really SHOULD NOT read the aegypt cycle. you should read little, big, which is like these books but much shorter and better.
i'd love to come back and revise this review upwards when i'm done with all four books but as of right now it feels like i know exactly where it's going and i'm wading for hours on end through florid overgrowth/fetid muck to get to a completely foregone conclusion. there's one or two pages every hundred pages where i feel what i want to feel on every page, where i'm levitating and i fully understand the world as he understands it. otherwise it's a damnable slog.
dude needs like a decade of sobriety and a month of browbeating by gordon lish or an acceptable modern lish equivalent.
i'd love to come back and revise this review upwards when i'm done with all four books but as of right now it feels like i know exactly where it's going and i'm wading for hours on end through florid overgrowth/fetid muck to get to a completely foregone conclusion. there's one or two pages every hundred pages where i feel what i want to feel on every page, where i'm levitating and i fully understand the world as he understands it. otherwise it's a damnable slog.
dude needs like a decade of sobriety and a month of browbeating by gordon lish or an acceptable modern lish equivalent.
October 9, 2023
I’m surprised more reviewers aren’t bringing up the whole “incest tulpa” chapter. (Like the famous Raymond Chandler advice to have someone barge in a door holding a gun, a new trick to write yourself out of a corner.) Or maybe everyone’s trying to forget. I think it’s an alchemical allegory, at least.
I don’t have any books I can compare to how I feel about this series so far. These have beautiful, powerful, mist-clearing passages able to make me think about things like God and ancient modes of thought in ways I’ve never “got” before, and spends a majority of its text basically delivering essays on some of the most indulgently fascinating historical topics tailored to me and my Wikipedia-crawling tastes.
But this is also something that makes me wonder the entire time: Is this a real book? Is Crowley getting away with something (and not in a commendable way) portraying this as a narrative at all? Ægypt/The Solitudes didn’t feel like it was building to a traditional call-to-action until its closing chapters, and this book rejects the forward inertia to instead splay out to the sides. (Including some strange sex philosophizing that has unfortunately narrowed the pool of people I can recommend these to without warning.) I couldn’t tell after the first book (and still can’t tell now) if this is a series that’s taking its time getting to where it’s going, or if it’s already content in its lane of surface-level-uneventfulness. (Little, Big was a very interior novel, but it was not shy about having very big dramatic things happen offscreen during the course of its plot, so I could see things going either way.) It seems fitting that the late-brewing momentum of Ægypt that led me straight into this book instead plunges you into a novella-length coming-of-age story about the protagonist’s early adolescence, so I’ll accept the humbling command to adjust expectations. (The childhood section is actually quite good though—I share the temptation of mining childhood for psychoanalytical fodder.)
Notes:
- This book attempts to recap every character and plot point from Ægypt when it’s relevant, an effort that takes almost 2/3 of the book to finish. The recap isn’t unwelcome, but it constantly raises the question of what on earth reading this book would be like without the first.
- A thought I’ll return to after reading on: I wonder if there’s supposed to be an ironic element here about Pierce not realizing nothing is really happening to him (e.g., is Pierce actually pulling any magic on Rosie Ryder, or is she just as much of a pushover as Rosie Mucho thinks). I don’t think there is, because, simply, it writes it all too profoundly for that kind of crafted cynicism.
- This is my third Crowley audiobook and the first not read by Crowley himself, and his presence is missed. This book would’ve probably still felt tonally haphazard, but his careful gentle narration would’ve gone a long way to sell the book over this new guy’s overly intense, pulpy narration. Crowley didn’t return for #3 or #4 either, making me hope the new readers are a better dice roll.
I don’t have any books I can compare to how I feel about this series so far. These have beautiful, powerful, mist-clearing passages able to make me think about things like God and ancient modes of thought in ways I’ve never “got” before, and spends a majority of its text basically delivering essays on some of the most indulgently fascinating historical topics tailored to me and my Wikipedia-crawling tastes.
But this is also something that makes me wonder the entire time: Is this a real book? Is Crowley getting away with something (and not in a commendable way) portraying this as a narrative at all? Ægypt/The Solitudes didn’t feel like it was building to a traditional call-to-action until its closing chapters, and this book rejects the forward inertia to instead splay out to the sides. (Including some strange sex philosophizing that has unfortunately narrowed the pool of people I can recommend these to without warning.) I couldn’t tell after the first book (and still can’t tell now) if this is a series that’s taking its time getting to where it’s going, or if it’s already content in its lane of surface-level-uneventfulness. (Little, Big was a very interior novel, but it was not shy about having very big dramatic things happen offscreen during the course of its plot, so I could see things going either way.) It seems fitting that the late-brewing momentum of Ægypt that led me straight into this book instead plunges you into a novella-length coming-of-age story about the protagonist’s early adolescence, so I’ll accept the humbling command to adjust expectations. (The childhood section is actually quite good though—I share the temptation of mining childhood for psychoanalytical fodder.)
Notes:
- This book attempts to recap every character and plot point from Ægypt when it’s relevant, an effort that takes almost 2/3 of the book to finish. The recap isn’t unwelcome, but it constantly raises the question of what on earth reading this book would be like without the first.
- A thought I’ll return to after reading on: I wonder if there’s supposed to be an ironic element here about Pierce not realizing nothing is really happening to him (e.g., is Pierce actually pulling any magic on Rosie Ryder, or is she just as much of a pushover as Rosie Mucho thinks). I don’t think there is, because, simply, it writes it all too profoundly for that kind of crafted cynicism.
- This is my third Crowley audiobook and the first not read by Crowley himself, and his presence is missed. This book would’ve probably still felt tonally haphazard, but his careful gentle narration would’ve gone a long way to sell the book over this new guy’s overly intense, pulpy narration. Crowley didn’t return for #3 or #4 either, making me hope the new readers are a better dice roll.
July 9, 2025
In the second volume of the AEgypt series, the reader is once again a traveler on the same path in two different eras, a seeker of the secret to the remaking of the world, the shift in time that changes everything, the thread that continues inside every disruption and binds its inhabitants to the universe and to each other.
Our hapless hero Pierce studies the restless journeys of Giordano Bruno and John Dee as the reader is inserted into their stories, their thoughts, their comings and goings, the futility of their attempts to understand and explain cosmic time. Like Pierce they can almost see, almost grasp, what they are looking for. but there is never a moment of consummation.
The book is layered with history and fiction, the magic and the mundane, serendipity and coincidence, the shapes of desire. The ideas are dense and difficult to sort, categorize, or completely comprehend. Like Pierce, the reader is left on the edge of a vast abyss of time and perception, mirror and projection, inner and outer voices, past and future transformations.
How DO humans fit into the cosmos? What part do they play (if any) in the way thing work? Can they really change the arc of time? Or is each era just one random story of many that could be told?
Our hapless hero Pierce studies the restless journeys of Giordano Bruno and John Dee as the reader is inserted into their stories, their thoughts, their comings and goings, the futility of their attempts to understand and explain cosmic time. Like Pierce they can almost see, almost grasp, what they are looking for. but there is never a moment of consummation.
The book is layered with history and fiction, the magic and the mundane, serendipity and coincidence, the shapes of desire. The ideas are dense and difficult to sort, categorize, or completely comprehend. Like Pierce, the reader is left on the edge of a vast abyss of time and perception, mirror and projection, inner and outer voices, past and future transformations.
How DO humans fit into the cosmos? What part do they play (if any) in the way thing work? Can they really change the arc of time? Or is each era just one random story of many that could be told?
March 24, 2024
OK, I finally met with a Crowley I didn't love. Honestly, I was tempted to put this one down about halfway through, because as much as I enjoy a good mental breakdown arc, Pierce's is ... not very relatable, to put it mildly. By the end it's clear what Crowley was going for, and the last 100 pages do stick the landing. I think the central conceit of the book is fascinating—there's a lot of truth here about what happens when eros gets the wrong kind of foothold in people's lives, putting them to sleep instead of stirring them awake. In the end, it just wasn't executed in a way that I found resonant.
That said, I'm still game to dive into Daemonomania and see where all this goes ... the highs of this series (so far) are high; I don't want to miss any.
That said, I'm still game to dive into Daemonomania and see where all this goes ... the highs of this series (so far) are high; I don't want to miss any.
April 16, 2024
I liked the history, the alchemy, the esoteric stuff.
I liked the opening third that told the story of Pierce's childhood.
I liked the writing, the prose, the imagery.
I didn't like Pierce's character as an adult.
I especially didn't like that he invented an imaginary son and fantasised about sexual intimacy with said imaginary son.
I will admit I skim read the last few chapters because I knew the book was coming to an end and there had to be some great hook to get you to read the next one. Unfortunately there wasn't. It felt like an abrupt and unsatisfactory ending. I read this immediately after the first book and I am now going to take a long break and read something else before I tackle the third.
I liked the opening third that told the story of Pierce's childhood.
I liked the writing, the prose, the imagery.
I didn't like Pierce's character as an adult.
I especially didn't like that he invented an imaginary son and fantasised about sexual intimacy with said imaginary son.
I will admit I skim read the last few chapters because I knew the book was coming to an end and there had to be some great hook to get you to read the next one. Unfortunately there wasn't. It felt like an abrupt and unsatisfactory ending. I read this immediately after the first book and I am now going to take a long break and read something else before I tackle the third.
July 11, 2017
One of the best fantasy novels I have ever read. This is my third re-read, and the book never flags for me. Prose that sustains the level of poetry all the way through, inventive characters, plots, and sub-plots. Perfection, Crowley's best after Little, Big.
August 29, 2024
Woozy but wonderful
Touched with pathos. Horribly structured and incapable of standing on its own without the first book. Very imaginative and full of windy awestruck passages. Worth it.
Touched with pathos. Horribly structured and incapable of standing on its own without the first book. Very imaginative and full of windy awestruck passages. Worth it.
April 2, 2022
A masterpiece of language and invention that convincingly imagines the fantastic in the real world.
August 10, 2024
Of a piece with The Solitudes. A bit more introspective and Weird than the first book. Incredible prose, and similarly a joy to read. Can see how it is not for everyone - the more you know about Renaissance occultism and odd corners of European folklore the more you're likely to enjoy it.
May 19, 2025
In which heck if I know.
April 20, 2025
I’m such a contrarian. I wrote a review a few days ago saying I wasn’t going to finish this book, and then I decided to finish it anyway. It’s difficult, and it doesn’t flow well. Let’s hope the next book in the series, if I ever get around to it, is better.
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