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A review by ddmckenna
Declare by Tim Powers
3.0
It was a fun story, but very... man-centric, I guess? Weirdly I never “felt” for the whole romantic interest portion of the story - it was there and obvious, but not compelling. Elena seemed an interesting character but always kind of distant and never very intimate. Mostly just an object for the protagonist to pursue.
I enjoyed the story and the magic, and the alternate history was a lot of fun - especially that he took pains to nest it into real historical events.
But I think the skipping around in time made some of it hard to get invested in, and it was confusing sometimes trying to think through what happened when. I had to pause and repeatedly run through the timeline in my head to think “wait, did x happen before y or after?” “Was z in the past or the current time?”
There was a LOT of detail that I didn’t think was necessary to the plot. Sometimes it dragged the story down.
I liked Hale’s familiarity with and affection for the Bedouins. That was probably the most “real” thing about the character Andrew Hale. Other than that I felt like he was kind of blindly following what he was told to do without even knowing who he was serving or understanding why he was doing what he was doing. I’m puzzled how he could be sure he was actually helping his country. After kind of getting the explanation for the “why” of all this I’m not sure *I* am convinced his work actually helped his country.
I enjoyed the story and the magic, and the alternate history was a lot of fun - especially that he took pains to nest it into real historical events.
But I think the skipping around in time made some of it hard to get invested in, and it was confusing sometimes trying to think through what happened when. I had to pause and repeatedly run through the timeline in my head to think “wait, did x happen before y or after?” “Was z in the past or the current time?”
There was a LOT of detail that I didn’t think was necessary to the plot. Sometimes it dragged the story down.
I liked Hale’s familiarity with and affection for the Bedouins. That was probably the most “real” thing about the character Andrew Hale. Other than that I felt like he was kind of blindly following what he was told to do without even knowing who he was serving or understanding why he was doing what he was doing. I’m puzzled how he could be sure he was actually helping his country. After kind of getting the explanation for the “why” of all this I’m not sure *I* am convinced his work actually helped his country.