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A review by xterminal
The Secret Service by Wendy Walker
5.0
(....)despite the amazing number of high-quality pages thathave passed my vision this year, when I turned the last page of TheSecret Service, there was no question: at this point in time, unless I come across something even more stunning, this is without doubt my book of the year.
Imagine, if you will, a nineteenth-century tale of intrigue set in the world of Myst, where nothing is what it seems and around every corner another surprising discovery awaits. The year is never given, but the century is, close to the end of the book, and it is set in Europe in the 1800s. The head of the British Secret Service has uncovered a plot by three of the continent's most powerful figures to overthrow the King of England. The plot has been twenty years in the making, and is about to come to a head. As all this is going on, a scientist in the employ of that same Secret Service has stumbled upon a discovery that will change the face of intrigue forever; he has discovered a way for humans to change their shapes. How better to spy on the conspirators than to send them those things they most obsess over? Three Secret Service agents, one of them a new recruit, are chosen as the main agents on the mission. One is sent to the German conspirator, a collector of fine glass and porcelain, as a crystal goblet of unparalleled delicacy; a second to the French conspirator, a gardener by hobby, as a heretofore-undiscovered breed of rose; a third to the Italian conspirator, a collector of sculpture, as a Milanese Thisbe. Of course, as with any decent spy novel, things start to go wrong just as everyone is settling in.
It's impossible to describe some of the novel's strongest points without giving away pieces of the plot. Polly, the new recruit and the novel's central character (if there is, truly, a central character here), finds herself on a journey that we're never told the nature of; it could be a spiritual journey, it could be an allegorical journey, it could be some physical trip to an alternate universe. We don't know. We couldn't care less. The end result is the same, and we are stunned by it. Similarly, revealing the slightest point of the plot would bring the whole intricate construction of the first hundred fifty or so pages down. In fact, revealing the shape-changing nature of the agents already takes away from the book, but I can't just say "it's the best damn book I've ever read, go get a copy." You're going to have to hunt high and low for one, I think, unless bookfinder.com happens to have a few lying around. So now you've got an idea of what it's about, kind of. But what is truly amazing about this book is its construction, its writing. It's not only set in the nineteenth century, it sounds as if it were written during the nineteenth century, but with a modern sensibilty. I'm not sure I can describe exactly what I mean, but books written before about WW2 or thereabouts have more of a sense of leisure (for want of a better term) about them. Hawthorne is supposed to be lingered over. Description is as important as plot. You are less following the action than immersed in it. And that is much of what Walker does here, though we rarely lose sight of what is going on around us. As well, and this is even less able to be imparted without expending a thousand or so words, it becomes obvious while reading that the fifteen years that Walker spent writing this novel were actually spent _writing_ this novel, not stopping and starting over and over again. There is an overwhelming sense of order and construction. There are very, very few places in the four hundred fifty-nine pages that make up this work-- to be precise, I counted two-- where it seems as if Walker slipped into cliche or took the easy way out in writing a passage. And by the time I encountered those, I was so entranced with the book's language that I felt as if those stray sentences were put there on purpose in order to draw the reader's attention to the care that had been taken with the rest of the book.
This book is not, in any way, an easy read. It demands time and concentration. More importantly, it is also a compelling book, a haunting book, one which stays with a reader whenever it is put down, until it is picked up again.
Easily an entry on the All-Time Top Ten list, and perhaps at the top of it. END
Imagine, if you will, a nineteenth-century tale of intrigue set in the world of Myst, where nothing is what it seems and around every corner another surprising discovery awaits. The year is never given, but the century is, close to the end of the book, and it is set in Europe in the 1800s. The head of the British Secret Service has uncovered a plot by three of the continent's most powerful figures to overthrow the King of England. The plot has been twenty years in the making, and is about to come to a head. As all this is going on, a scientist in the employ of that same Secret Service has stumbled upon a discovery that will change the face of intrigue forever; he has discovered a way for humans to change their shapes. How better to spy on the conspirators than to send them those things they most obsess over? Three Secret Service agents, one of them a new recruit, are chosen as the main agents on the mission. One is sent to the German conspirator, a collector of fine glass and porcelain, as a crystal goblet of unparalleled delicacy; a second to the French conspirator, a gardener by hobby, as a heretofore-undiscovered breed of rose; a third to the Italian conspirator, a collector of sculpture, as a Milanese Thisbe. Of course, as with any decent spy novel, things start to go wrong just as everyone is settling in.
It's impossible to describe some of the novel's strongest points without giving away pieces of the plot. Polly, the new recruit and the novel's central character (if there is, truly, a central character here), finds herself on a journey that we're never told the nature of; it could be a spiritual journey, it could be an allegorical journey, it could be some physical trip to an alternate universe. We don't know. We couldn't care less. The end result is the same, and we are stunned by it. Similarly, revealing the slightest point of the plot would bring the whole intricate construction of the first hundred fifty or so pages down. In fact, revealing the shape-changing nature of the agents already takes away from the book, but I can't just say "it's the best damn book I've ever read, go get a copy." You're going to have to hunt high and low for one, I think, unless bookfinder.com happens to have a few lying around. So now you've got an idea of what it's about, kind of. But what is truly amazing about this book is its construction, its writing. It's not only set in the nineteenth century, it sounds as if it were written during the nineteenth century, but with a modern sensibilty. I'm not sure I can describe exactly what I mean, but books written before about WW2 or thereabouts have more of a sense of leisure (for want of a better term) about them. Hawthorne is supposed to be lingered over. Description is as important as plot. You are less following the action than immersed in it. And that is much of what Walker does here, though we rarely lose sight of what is going on around us. As well, and this is even less able to be imparted without expending a thousand or so words, it becomes obvious while reading that the fifteen years that Walker spent writing this novel were actually spent _writing_ this novel, not stopping and starting over and over again. There is an overwhelming sense of order and construction. There are very, very few places in the four hundred fifty-nine pages that make up this work-- to be precise, I counted two-- where it seems as if Walker slipped into cliche or took the easy way out in writing a passage. And by the time I encountered those, I was so entranced with the book's language that I felt as if those stray sentences were put there on purpose in order to draw the reader's attention to the care that had been taken with the rest of the book.
This book is not, in any way, an easy read. It demands time and concentration. More importantly, it is also a compelling book, a haunting book, one which stays with a reader whenever it is put down, until it is picked up again.
Easily an entry on the All-Time Top Ten list, and perhaps at the top of it. END