Dæmonomania

Finished Dæmonomania the other day and it floored me.

Languorous and layered, humane and hermetic, erudite and often page-kissingly lovely, Dæmonomania is the third part (of four) of Ægypt, John Crowley's cycle about the secret history of the world and the perhaps even more closely guarded secrets of the human heart.
 
In it, the seeds of the things that were planted in its immediate predecessor, Love & Sleep, flower and ripen and everything manages to go right and then wrong. The pages are crammed full of esoterica and writerly paragraphs and passages, but the focus is so close and so delicately are the characters handled (despite the sometimes crushing turns they are subjected to), that it never feels dry or forced or artificial.

What's more, Crowley has managed to refigure and recontextualize many of the ideas and characters and plotlines from the previous two books in ways that seem organic and real and yet completely change the meaning of what has come before. And, of course, that's sort of the theme of the book within the book (and of the books themselves). When it works (as it nearly always does) it is like witnessing a perfectly crafted magic trick or, perhaps, like alchemy; you have to lay the open book against your breast and give your head (heart?) time to stop spinning.

There is a lot going on.

But I dunno. It is the sort of novel you have a hard time describing because so much and so little happens. Or, anyway, it is the sort of novel you have a hard time describing without pretentiousness.

Certainly, I've already failed.

I can't gain much ground by rambling on and on. Suffice it to say that I have loved no books more than I've loved these four comprising the Ægypt cycle and I've loved few as much.

Go and pick up the first one, The Solitudes.

It is the book you should be reading as we roll into Spring.