Vellum: The Book of All Hours (utgåvan 2006)

Started off well, but ended in quite a mess. ( )

What an odd book... it took me almost the whole thing to break my mind from trying to read it as fragmented pieces of linear arcs (cross-referencing and influencing one another). Rather, it reads as a flow of implications; the story changing--literally, at the structural level--as characters and events influence the interpretations of what has gone before.

Ridiculously confusing, and I really do feel the ideas escaped from the author at times, but then, given the intention of the formal / plot invention, is that actually a flaw?

Still, I'll take a break before the sequel (which merely means I'll have to *re-learn* this same lesson!) ( )

I was just not in the mood for this one - twisted reality and a gaggle of boys and one girl/goddess on a motorcycle. It just kept going around in circles and I got bored. ( )

i wanted to love this book, i did, but in the end i just couldn't. the immortal stuff just didn't work, though it had the placement advantage of the non-linear timelines. the endless war stories weren't my cup of tea - it's a relentlessly male kind of a book. and the ventures into mythology seemed a bit forced, sadly. the Supernatural series made a more coherent narrative out of Metatron and the angels' war in heaven a few years later, and the Inanna assault on the underworld never really gels, largely because both his mythic and his character stand-in for Inanna are written as too weak and passive to execute a plan. planning in fact may be the problem overall; could his association with a writer's group described as an "anarchist collective" suggest a reason? "operation: focus narrative", reads the author's internal note on the text at p. 314, but he never quite does, and as a result i had terrible trouble staying awake in the middle of the book; i kept nodding off, from one line to the next, and finally realized i was busy in my sleep rewriting lines and finishing paragraphs to my own satisfaction, and no reader ever reads a book in order to write one. so now i have to decide whether to read Ink, the second book, which i have on hand, because i was expecting to want to. sigh. ( )

profanity, obscenity, blasphemy, all these were what this book centered around. Humans become angels, the top angel became god, was overthrown. Angels, demons, whatever, are unkin. And a war wages between them all. The Vellum is under all, the true reality" that can be rewritten.

This book was very non-linear, almost like the author was on an acid trip or smoking pot when he wrote this. Duncan gloried in profanity and homosexuality, and a refusal to "choose" sides in a divine war. And it was just so full of emptiness, hopelessness and despair. Who would want that kind of world view? Ugh." ( )