DAEMONOMANIA (Aegypt Cycle; Vol. 3)

In the world of Dæmonomania--volume three of John Crowley's stunning Ægypt cycle--the concerns of everyday life are beginning to transmute into the extraordinary and to reveal the forces, dark and light, that truly govern their lives. So it is for Pierce Moffett, would-be historian and author, who has moved from New York to the Faraway Hills, where he seems to discover--or rediscover--a path into magic, past and present. And so it is for Rosie Rasmussen, a single mother grappling with her mysterious uncle's legacy and her young daughter Samantha's inexplicable seizures. For Pierce's lover Rose Ryder, another path unfolds: she's drawn into a cult that promises to exorcise her demons. It is the dark of the year, between Halloween and the winter solstice, and the gateway is open between the worlds of the living and the dead. A great cycle of time is ending, and Pierce and Rosie, Samantha and Rose Ryder must take sides in an age-old war that is approaching the final battle...Or is it? Dæmonomania is a journey into the very mystery of existence: what is, what went before, and what could break through at any moment in our lives.

Historian Pierce Moffett finds his key to understanding in New York state's Faraway Hills, as do his lover, Rose Ryder, and single mom Rosie Rasmussen, whose daughter seems to suffer from dæmonomania--spiritual possession by Renaissance magician John Dee. Each character must pick a careful path between the colliding juggernauts of past and present, magic and mundane. The wind of apocalypse is blowing:

"Scary wind.... What if it's the one?" she said.

"What one?" he said.... He in fact knew what one, for it was from him that she had heard mythologies of wind, how it bloweth where it listeth, one part of Nature not under God's thumb and therefore perhaps at the disposal of our Enemy; she had heard his stories about changer winds, how one had once blown away the Spanish Armada and thus saved England from Catholic conquest, a famous wind which if you went to look for it in the records of the time wasn't there.

Crowley describes Dæmonomania best when he writes about Pierce's book: "The book... was about magic, secret histories, and the End of the World, an event that Pierce would suggest was under way undetectably even as he wrote, as the reader read." This is a complex, disturbing, and beautiful book, one that will bear rereading. Crowley's writing is gorgeous in places, frustrating in others, but always irresistible. --Therese Littleton

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All Customer Reviews
Average Customer Review:
0 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Daemonomania, 2007-03-12
This book was awful. I forced myself to finish it because I did not feel right claiming it was the worst book I'd ever read if I had not finished it. It was a gift, and I was not aware if was the third book in a series (perhaps the cover should be more clear on this matter). Reading the other books would probably have made some of the confusing parts less so, however the book would still have been awful. I kept waiting for the author to tie everything together and get to some point or conculsion that he never did. It reads as if he just stopped writing. The story was not entertaining in the least with the plot bouncing around all over the place. I don't claim to be an intellectual so perhaps this book was not meant for me. If like to be confused and puzzel out books from the first page, read this. Otherwise, I would advise you to take a pass on this one.


4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Aegypt 3: Daemonomania, 2006-02-24
Bantam was insane to release this book without identifying it in any way as the third volume of a novel in progress! What strange experiences the many misled must have had reading it. Aegypt is a strange enough novel already, after all, with two sets of interwined narratives in each of two (three? seven?) time periods, interpolations from imaginary novels and poems, summaries of actual Renaissance and hermetic texts, digressions on astrology, divorce law, and you name it...Daemonomania alone tackles sado-masochism, Christian cults, masturbation, epilepsy, murder, molestation, the Philosopher's Stone, a number of different takes on "magic", several thousand things I'm forgetting and (a couple times over) The End Of The World.

Anyway, don't even think about touching this book until you've read its two prequels, Aegypt (AKA The Solitudes) and Love & Sleep, available in most libraries.

Daemonomania is the longest segment, thus far, and perhaps the wildest. Its writing is magnificent, its content wise and tough-minded. It wraps up most of the story arc of Aegypt: Apparently the almost-complete volume four, Endless Things, will be something of a departure.

What else to say? As far out as he ranges, Crowley's topic is always life itself, like any good novelist. And like any great one, he frequently shows us what our own lives are like in ways that we, merely living them, have somehow never noticed. This superb, crazy novel is an ongoing miracle.




2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Only 3 stars for Crowley? I hoped I'd never have to do it., 2005-12-19
Is it just me, or is Crowley's command of English slipping? He even tries to get away with "pinnace" meaning (apparently) pennant"! This is depressing in this most fastidious writer. I'd forgive him (with difficulty) if he pulled off more of the exquisitely beautiful prose that he can produce, but this book seems overwrought and tired instead. His prose is still so much better than most writers' that I don't want to be savage, but by his own geostationary standards it has fallen far.
He is still trying to "write sex". He's tried before, failed, and has acknowledged it as a problem. He devoted enough space to it in this book to make this reader, at least, wish he'd get it over with, or get over it, if he can't get it over. His occasional attempts to be playful or eager fall like stones into a bathtub.
This book is spent marking time, and cueing things that have yet to happen. It's not obvious that it's making progress with other things rather than plot: the characters still seem fuzzy and vestigial (a Crowley feature, or problem, according to taste). John Dee apparently succeeds in making gold - "sophic, wonderful" - but it doesn't appear to do him any good: he finds out, what he could fairly have been expected to see coming, that the spirits whom he has consulted through his scryer are having him on. Although (in a sense) "the world ends twice", the second occasion has yet to be worked out - we don't really know ANYTHING about it except that it involves an entertaining bit of Renaissance clockwork (literally), and that it is introduced with a great wind (like the last one). Funny, that. Water has already been, air has been, fire is not yet, so this ought to be earth, but there's no sign of it. Crowley has hinted that fire may appear later (but it was then being promised for volume 3, and it may never have been more than a tease).
Perhaps when this particular four-volume slog is over he will again turn to miniature perfections like "Engine Summer", or really frightening visions of the shape of human life like that seen in "The Deep". Please, please.


4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

Prosaicomania, 2005-03-05
John Crowley is surely a writer's writer - that is, he would rather impress other writers with his craft than engage readers with exciting plotlines or empathetic characters. I have nothing against other reviewers who are amazed by Crowley's intricate layering of philosophies and his mastery of language, but I consider it all self-indulgent, pretentious, and boring. There is certainly a plethora of intriguing wordplay here, representing twisted realities and time unstuck, but Crowley also frequently overdoes it (badly) with annoying slush like "Where he had once. The sunporch where." Exploring the depths of prose can only get you so far with readers who don't feel like taking months to read a book slowly to soak in all the words, especially when the plot ultimately fails to secure one's attention for any extended amount of time.

The basic premise of this novel is wonderfully intriguing, featuring different ends of the world for different observers, with occult mysticism and medieval philosophy getting warped into diverging time streams and realities in the present. However, this book's jacket makes no mention that it is a continuation of some of Crowley's previous books, so the unfamiliar reader is confronted with ideas that are already in progress with inadequate explanations. Crowley doesn't even bother to wrap up all the story's possibilities in this book (or the previous installments). A heavily anti-climactic conclusion, which deals more with developments in the philosophy rather than the plot or the characters, promises nothing except yet another continuation into the next book that might come out someday whenever Crowley gets around to it. Fans of long-winded and pretentious literary contortions are surely waiting with bated breath, but the rest of us will have no trouble moving on to something else more readable. [~doomsdayer520~]


2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Dripping with language, endless foreplay but scant climax, 2003-01-27
Having not read any of Crowley's previous works, I picked up Daemonomania without any preconceived notions of what it should have been like. I was immediately attracted to the level of language used and the "Thomas-Hardy-on-crystal-meth" style of description. Daemonomania is indeed a feast for the linguaphile.

The soaring descriptions, the intricate character development, the seamless weave of the present, the past, and the alter-present, however, never quite seem to come to a climax, leaving the reader feeling teased and somewhat exhausted. One almost wishes for an Anne Rice-esque climactic ... power, lust, and blood, reminiscent of the concluding pages of "The Witching Hour", but then remembers that this is Crowley, not the Queen of the Damned. Crowley builds so much tension, though, that the reader years in vain for some sort of release. When it comes, however, it is no more satisfying than a rice cake and some diet Coke after having won the Iditerrod.

I'll read it again, probably more than once, if for no other reasons than to enjoy Crowley's thick, lush, and intriciately woven prose; and to resist the temptation of using such a thick, lush, and weighty book as a doorstop/paperweight/cheese press. It deserves reading... but if you want to really sate your desire for supernatural, demonic storytelling, subject yourself to a rereading of "The Witching Hour".

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