Declare: A Novel
This supernatural suspense thriller crosses several genres--espionage,  geopolitics, religion, fantasy. But like the chicken crossing the road, it takes  quite a while to get to the other side. En route, Tim Powers covers a lot of  territory: Turkey, Armenia, the Saudi Arabian desert, Beirut, London, Paris,  Berlin, and Moscow. Andrew Hale, an Oxford lecturer who first entered Her  Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service as an 18-year-old schoolboy, is called  back to finish a job that culminated in a deadly mission on Mount Ararat after  the end of World War II. Now it's 1963, and cold war politics are behind the  decision to activate Hale for another attempt to complete Operation Declare and  bring down the Communist government before Moscow can harness the powerful,  other-worldly forces concentrated on the summit of the mountain, supposed site  of the landing of Noah's ark. James Theodora is the über-spymaster whose  internecine rivalry with other branches of the Secret Intelligence Service traps  Hale between a rock and a hard place, literally and figuratively. There's plenty  of mountain and desert survival stuff here, a plethora of geopolitical and  theological history, and a big serving ofA Thousand and One Nights,  which is Hale's guide to the meteorites, drogue stones, andamononplant,  which figure in this complicated tale. There's a love story, too, and a bizarre  twist on the Kim Philby legend that posits both Philby and Hale as the only  humans who can tame the powers of the djinns who populate Mount Ararat.This is an easy book to get lost in, and Powers's many fans will have a field  day with it. The rest of us may have a harder time.--Jane Adams