Aegypt (Fantasy Masterworks)

by John Crowley

There is more than one history of the world. Before science defined the modern age, other powers, wondrous and magical, once governed the universe, their lore perfected within a lost capital of hieroglyphs, wizard-kings, and fabulous monuments.

In the 1970s, a historian named Pierce Moffett moves to the New England countryside to write a book about AEgypt, driven by an idea he dare not believe: that the physical laws of the universe once changed and may change again. Yet the notion is not his alone. Something waits at the locked estate of Fellowes Kraft, author of romances about Will Shakespeare and Giordano Bruno and Dr. John Dee, something for which Pierce and those near him have long sought without knowing it: a key, perhaps, to AEgypt ...

• ISBN10: 0553345923
• ISBN13: 9780553345926
• Publish Date: 1 February 1989 (first published 1 March 1987)
• Publish Status: Remaindered
• Out of Print: 2 February 2017
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Bantam Books
• Format: Paperback (US Trade)
• Language: English

Reviews

[empressbrooke]

There is more than one history of the world - or so John Crowley says repeatedly in Aegypt (original titled The Solitudes, apparently), the first in a four-book series.

I have to admit, I almost didn't make it through. The first 1/3 of the book is sloooow and pretentious. I hate leaving books unfinished, though, so I plowed ahead. Once Crowley finishes laying out his thesis and starts moving along, it gets better. Still so very pretentious, but better.

It skips back and forth and up and down between all sorts of characters - Pierce Moffett, a 30-something ex-professor who wants to write a book about the histories of the world; Rosie Mucho, who takes up a lot of pages but hasn't really done anything except leave her husband; and the various real-life characters in fictional author Fellows Kraft's books: young Shakespeare, Giordano Bruno, Dr. John Dee, and Edward Talbot. It's annoying, sometimes, settling in with one person and then being pushed along to the next.

The dialogue does not win any awards - everyone peppers their sentences with "hey"s and "okay"s and "what"s-without-a-question-mark. It's definitely closer to real dialogue than prose, but what really comes out of our mouths is not meant for being read verbatim. It's just messy. There aren't even very many real conversations - everyone is lost in these endless internal monologues, which made me want to yell, "Let's just get on with it!" sometimes.

Despite all these complaints, the latter two thirds of the book left me intrigued enough to pick up at least the second book in the series. It's not that I really, really enjoyed this one and want to read more, but rather that I just want to see where it's heading. I can't imagine for the life of me what Crowley can do for another three books on this topic, but I'm willing to find out.