Might as well talk about 'Ink' and 'Vellum' together, since they're really one work. Conveniently, Duncan describes his work himself, within the text of the book:"...the Book has as many histories as the world itself, and it contains them all in its Moebius loop of time and space, of contradicting stories somehow fused as one confused and rambling tale, a sort of truth but full of inconsistencies and digressions, spurious interpolations and interpretations, fiction told as fact, fact told as fiction..."At least, that's the goal. It starts off promisingly: a student seeks to steal a secret vellum manuscript - the Book of All Hours - a book which determines and reflects reality, which contains all possible realities... a book written in the language of angels, upon the skin of angels, which contains the entirety of the time-space continuum. This is connected to a War in Heaven, agents of the angels that walk upon the earth, and a lot of Sumerian mythology. It began by reminding me of Storm Constantine's Grigori books, and Catherynne Valente's Palimpsest. Neither of those is a bad thing. However, there's a problem with writing a book about a book that is supposed to contain all things, when you intend the format of your book to reflect that of your fictional book. How do you edit it? What should go in, and what shouldn't? I would have had trouble editing this book, I have to admit. And, in the end, I don't think it worked.It's obvious that Duncan wrote several reasonably coherent narratives, then chopped them up at mostly-random, and mixed them together. He also wrote a lot of random Other Stuff (thoughts in his head that day?) and stuck those in too. (It reminded me of doing college creative writing assignments, when I sometimes pieced disparate pieces of my writing together in order to make up a page count by a deadline.)Yes, the reader can piece the narratives together as s/he goes along, but do the "inconsistencies and digressions, spurious interpolations and interpretations" serve a purpose? I kept hoping that they would. I have to admit that my interest was waning by the end of the first book, but I read the whole second book with the hope that it would all get pulled together. I don't feel that that happened.Duncan is obviously a smart guy. He's very obviously well and widely educated. There are a lot of interesting ideas in these books, and many of the small vignettes are expertly and beautifully written. He has a nice command of the English language. However, I couldn't help feeling that he might be more suited to writing essays than novels. I bet he's good at academic papers, too. About halfway through the second book, I was thinking about why I really wasn't enjoying it, and I realized that all of the characters, no matter which reality they're currently in, whether they speak in a broadly-written accent, are young or old, or even (in one case) female, seem like they're actually the same person: Hal Duncan(?) I kid you not, after I realized that, on the very next page, I came across this quote: "there's a deeper connection between them - Jack, Puck, Anna, Joey, Don and himself...Finnan too, wherever he is. The seven of them, seven souls, but maybe really only one...identity."Yep. They're all the same person. And they're too busy being archetypes, metaphors or mouthpieces most of the time, to be convincing characters.Duncan says, "Let us consider reality itself as a palimpsest." OK, consider that considered. I even really like the idea. I like a LOT of the ideas in this book. But I feel that those idea would have come through better through the use of a more consistent format - not even necessarily a traditional format, but just a more consistent one. For example, part 3 (the first half of 'Ink') is largely taken up by the characters putting on a performance of a version of 'The Bacchae.' However, Greek drama plays little part in any of the other sections of the book. It feels out-of-place. As do many of the other "spurious interpolations" within the text.I feel like Duncan said, "well, it's inconsistent because I want it to be inconsistent." But I still prefer consistency. And characters with individual identities.I often really like things that others describe, negatively, as "pretentious." But this is one of those rare occasions where I am feeling moved to use "pretentious" in a negative sense. This book is pretentious.
From the very first tentative brushes we have with a story, we are treated to the principle of duality in the form of good v/s evil. This permeated every single story in my childhood where after a series of struggles, the force of good seemed to prevail. This plot line even extended beyond the realm of humans into the denizens of the great beyond. The two forms forever locked in never ending combat were angels and demons and as organized religion would have us believe, the angels and their lord and master shall always prevail. But then our childhood heroes have the habit of sometimes crumbling to dust as we grow up and this was what happened to me in the long run too. There are always shades of grey and stories were no exceptions to them. Hal Duncan extracts such a shade of grey against the backdrop of this never ending divine war and builds his story around it.For the entire duration that I was reading this book, I felt stoned. The images that the author conjures with his words can only be described as psychedelic. They are vivid, deep and extremely rich to behold. The angels here create what is called a covenant and the demons are called sovereigns and as they draw the battle lines for the end game, they scramble to sign up two wild cards into their game. The author does select a variety of backdrops in the three volumes covered in the book : the first volume deals with Sumerian myths, the second with a post-apocalyptic America and the third against a period of warfare that stretches along the lines of the Spanish civil war and the WWI. The narrative behaves like a simian on steroids. Every two pages it jumps to a different timeline. As you get your moorings in Sumeria, it jumps to London during the 1800's and then to Texas in the 1900's and then to...well it just keeps on moving. The author makes no distinctions between the past, the present or the future. While this is an interesting way to tell a story, it is downright infuriating after a while for you cannot make head or tail of what is going on. I did find a correlation with Gaiman's American Gods at places but here the concepts are slightly disjoint and out of focus. It is as if Hal Duncan had a mountain of ideas and did not know what to do with all of them.I give it three stars but the third star is akin to what you hang on a Christmas tree - only for decorative purposes. The third star is only for the visual imagery and the grandiose load of ideas that the author had. It is a hollow star really, this is a two star book.
Do You like book Vellum (2006)?
How often do you encounter a book you can both love and hate. This is massively ambitious book, portraying a war in heaven across an almost infinite variety of incarnations of the universe. Across this are a seemingly endless array of characters, many of whm have different incarnations in the varying versions of history. This means of course that the book is by the very nature of what it is trying to portray massively complex.The incarnations if history, are also frequently retellings of myths, not all of which the reader can necessarilly be expetced to be familiar with. The strength of this for me was the individual stories. It is all beautifully written, and the episodes are powerful and emotive. The weakness is that is doesn't really feel to add up to any more than the sum of its parts. It can be a hugely frustrating experience in this regard.The book was also, paradoxically, rounded off comfortably, but seemed to have stopped part way through the story. I wonder if the sequel (Ink) will actually address some of the issues I have. I'm curious to find out.
—Dave
Vellum on juuri sellainen kuin aavistelin ja pelkäsin, mutta pitihän siihen silti tutustua. Olin aiemmin lukenut muutaman Hal Duncanin novellin Tähtivaeltajasta ja ne olivat suhteellisen vaikeita ja en päässyt niissä samalle aaltopituudelle kirjailijan kanssa. Niin ei käynyt myöskään Vellumin kohdalla. Alku tuntui lupaavalta, mutta sitten alkoi mennä yli hilseen. Lukeminen sujui kyllä ongelmitta ja tavallaan ymmärrys oli mukana lukiessa, mutta yrittäessä hahmottaa kokonaisuutta ja tarinan tarkoitusta, pää menee jo pyörälle. Kun seuraavana päivänä jatkaa lukemista mihin edellisenä päivänä jäi ja kelaa mitäs aikaisemmin tapahtui, ei muista mitään merkittävää kirjassa tapahtuneenkaan. Vellum on kuitenkin hyvin kirjoitettu ja omaperäinen ihan taatusti, mutta tarina on niin pirstaleinen eri todellisuuksineen ja aikajanoineen, että simppelimpi ihminen kuten minä, on lopulta ihan pihalla kuin lumiukko. Hienoa, että omaperäisiä ja haasteellisia tarinoita kirjoitetaan, mutta omaan makuuni Vellum on liian sekava ja juoneton. Voi olla, että tarina selkeytyy edetessään, en tiedä, sillä kärsivällisyys ei riittänyt koko kirjan lukemiseen.
—Eija
This book was actually painful to read. I'm not entirely sure why I didn't just put it down. It was like reading modern art or listening to modern music, which, if you're into it, is fine, but if you're not, you just see something meaningless or hear disharmonies, that's only art or music because someone said so. Reading this, I felt like Duncan wrote bits of assorted stories on cards and then shuffled them together and called it a book. Some of the bits are chronological, some of them even make sense. Some involve the same characters, although it's hard to always be sure, since everyone seems to have the same name, or to change names several times. But it's not a narrative. There are bits, no more than a few pages each time that tell a coherent story, and the only reason I give this book even part of a star is because some of these bits are good. If he'd stuck with one of these ideas and fleshed it out, instead of flitting all over the place, Duncan might have had something worth reading.
—Mara
