Forum Overview :: Dead Trees :: Declare (AIM log)

[quote name="Last"]This book "Declare" is NOT Laundry Files but IS about British spies fighting Mythos. Well, I think it's Cthulhu. It's definitely a terrible magical thing. I think I've been reading every book lately as if it were really about Cthulhu. Wildly disappointing. I mean, this book is really good but I disappoint myself when stuff turns out to not be Mythos. Declare is WW2 + cold war British spy stuff. Lots of secrecy and danger. Strange stuff happens! A guy is a British spy pretending to be a Russian spy pretending to be a German. He taps out secret German military secrets to Moscow, but while tapping out the signal he starts kind of convulsing and tapping in a crazy rhythm. People around him start bending weirdly, and strange circles burn themselves into the wallpaper, and he taps faster and faster and faster and faster AND FASTER AND FASTER until the power shorts out and everyone is shook awake like WTF? Or, spies learn to walk with a certain patter that causes people to ignore them and the spies kind of daydream mightily and then snap awake to realize they are ten miles away and crossed through two checkpoints without being stopped. Lots of weird magic stuff in the form of drumbeats, taps, footsteps, and the like. Nobody really knows what's going on, and they don't like to talk about it, but they are disturbed. Also, people remember FLEEING in terror from a mountain peak but nobody can remember what they saw up there. (Their minds can't even comprehend the horrific nonsense perverted alien geometries!) By people I mean spies. So, what's at the top of that mountain? What's with the weird drumbeat effects? That's on TOP of the normal wartime dangers. So far it's pretty good but, as always, I hope it's more Cthulhuy as it goes on. In the end, it is about 20% too long, but it has some VERY GOOD cold war spycraft and some PRETTY GOOD occult mystery going on. If it was a lot shorter then it'd be the perfect book. As it stands, there's a lot of stuff to slog through but still pretty worth reading if you are into that kind of thing.[/quote]