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Daemonomania (2001)

Daemonomania (2001)

Book Info

Author
Genre
Rating
4.11 of 5 Votes: 3
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ISBN
0553378236 (ISBN13: 9780553378238)
Language
English
Publisher
bantam

About book Daemonomania (2001)

Again four stars, but this was a rougher one for me . . . it's really 3.5 with the scope of the whole series pulling it up a little. Mostly because I don't like Rose, and the more the book zoomed in on her the more irritated I got. I have a painfully low tolerance for people I want to slap, whether on the page or in real life, and there was definitely more than one moment of thinking "really? she's become this important? are you sure this is working, or are you just using her to nudge the plot along?" And yet . . . to be honest, I hadn't expected to get so, well, involved with the characters at all . . . there is so much brain candy being offered that I sometimes forget there are also people being presented and described. In truth, for much of this volume I was more engaged in the Kraft novel; I think that because it is set in another time it is that much more transporting, while the main storyline is set in a past I can remember in my own life, however fragmented: familiar, and thus I gloss over the sensual details and zoom in on the conceptual knickknacks that litter the pages. If that makes sense. Anyway, now a quick detour through some overdue library books (one being Dr. Dee's journals, if nothing else this series is making me want to read all that has funneled into it, which is quite a lot) and then it's on to Endless Things.

*Sigh* I realize that John Crowley is an acquired taste for many people but for me, he can write some of the most hypnotic and compelling prose I've ever read. When I come upon it, I sink right through the words into whatever world Mr. Crowley had decided to create. The problem, for this book, is that that writing is broken up by considerable stretches of the most pedestrian writing that brings you up short wondering what just happened.But I have made it through three of the four books of the Cycle, so I can only hope the conclusion will sing like it should.....

Do You like book Daemonomania (2001)?

Like the two previous books in the Aegypt series, this one is monumental, riveting, exasperating. I rarely read books twice, but I have a feeling I am going to be reading this series again sometime, because so much eluded me the first time. Crowley's oblique, evocative, tantalizing style keeps you hooked but in the end I felt frustrated, wondering if I'd missed clues I should have picked up. To take just one example, what was the "quiet question" that Beau Brachman, posing as Jesus, puts to the
—Vicky

I got stuck in the middle of this one for a long time, but once I came back and focused on it, it went by very quickly.In some ways, the Aegypt series still feels tremendously unfocused. It is united by the new age magic and world-organizing principles that everyone in the book finds, guided by an endless supply of gurus (Cliff, Ray, Beau, even Pierce in his own way). There is no ideology, of course - in a Crowley novel, everything is about feeling and intuition, and the attempt to fit anything into an evidence-based logical order would burst all the bubbles. (view spoiler)[In a sense, this is the chief conflict of Daemonomania, since Pierce's distress over Rose's conversion centers on his unwillingness to let her believe the absurdities he spends so much time studying. (hide spoiler)]
—Adam

The scope of this quartet of novels is magnificent and awe-inspiring. This third book in a tetralogy (The Aegypt Cycle) requires you to have read the first and second, to an even greater degree than many other series. If you've read the first and are debating reading the second, see my review here on Goodreads: here The date I read this is approximate, but I'm sure it was within a few months of the release of the hardcover in the U.S. I had read the first and second books in paperback (the first in 1989 or 1990). At that time, I had no idea this would be a 20-year project for author John Crowley.
—Mindy McAdams

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