Endless Things: A Part of AEgypt [Kindle Edition]

John Crowley (Author)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Crowley's eloquent and captivating conclusion to his Ægypt tetralogy finds scholar Pierce Moffet still searching for the mythical Ægypt, an alternate reality of magic and marvels that have been encoded in our own world's myths, legends and superstitions. Pierce first intuited the realm's existence from the work of cult novelist Fellowes Kraft. Using Kraft's unfinished final novel as his Baedeker, Pierce travels to Europe, where he spies tantalizing traces of Ægypt's mysteries in the Gnostic teachings of the Rosicrucians, the mysticism of John Dee, the progressive thoughts of heretical priest Giordano Bruno and the "chemical wedding" of two 17th-century monarchs in Prague. Like Pierce's travels, the final destination for this modern fantasy epic is almost incidental to its telling. With astonishing dexterity, Crowley (Lord Byron's Novel) parallels multiple story lines spread across centuries and unobtrusively deploys recurring symbols and motifs to convey a sense of organic wholeness. Even as Pierce's quest ends on a fulfilling personal note, this marvelous tale comes full circle to reinforce its timeless themes of transformation, re-creation and immortality. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

There are three major plots and one minor one in the last of Crowley's four Aegypt novels, and developments regarding two secondary characters bulk so large that they almost become two more. Two of the major plots concern series protagonist Pierce Moffett. In one, 1990s Pierce is on a working retreat at a Trappist monastery; in the other, 1970s Pierce retraces historical novelist Fellowes Kraft's 1930s European journey researching the gnostic heretic Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). The third major plot is the tale of how Bruno's soul migrated from his about-to-be-burned-at-the-stake body into that of an ass and what transpired thereafter, a sort of Renaissance take on Apuleius' Golden Ass. That plotline is the one those unfamiliar with the other Aegypt books (The Solitudes, 1987; Love & Sleep, 1994; Daemonomania, 2000), uninterested in Pierce Moffett's woolgathering, and unimpressed by Crowley's anaphoric rhetorical flights will probably warm to most. Such Aegyptian neophytes may indeed be so bored by the rest of the book that they quit it before reaching its impressive and moving, homeyconclusion. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 569 KB
• Print Length: 368 pages
• Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1931520224
• Publisher: Small Beer Press (May 1, 2007)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services
• Language: English
• ASIN: B00140IU9I
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #294,513 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

John Crowley was born in the appropriately liminal town of Presque Isle, Maine, in 1942, his father then an officer in the US Army Air Corps. He grew up in Vermont, northeastern Kentucky and (for the longest stretch) Indiana, where he went to high school and college. He moved to New York City after college to make movies, and did find work in documentary films, an occupation he still pursues. He published his first novel (The Deep) in 1975, and his 14th volume of fiction (Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land) in 2005. Since 1993 he has taught creative writing at Yale University. In 1992 he received the Award in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. He finds it more gratifying that almost all his work is still in print.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The transforming power of the novel, May 10, 2007

By 

The Ginger Man - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Endless Things: A Part of Aegypt (Hardcover)

This book is the final volume of 4 in the Aegypt series written over the last 20 years. It weaves together the story of writer Pierce Moffett's search into the past and a battle in 1614 that changed our world into one in which Descartes' division of subject and object is preserved and magic is banished.

Endless Things can be read without the prior volumes but the reader's experience is greatly enriched if the books are read in order. Sections of Endless Things dealing with the present are quick and engaging. The historic chapters are dense, erudite and even more interesting. At bottom, the authors (Moffett, Crowley and Fellowes Kraft) are trying to figure out "why is everything the way it is and not some different way instead?" This leads to a more personal question asked by unsuccessful searcher Moffett: "Why was he what he was and not better?"

Along the way, we see an earlier world where alchemy and magic have as much claim to an unknown future as do science and reason. We hear Crowley's conclusion that gods are but stories and that every age must find the stories that correspond to its unique reality.

The author creates words which, according to the secret of the Cabala, can change the nature of things.

This all can be heavy going at times but Crowley is our best contemporary writer of the fabulous, making the unreal seem a solid basis for a far richer reality. It is worth the reader's effort as he finds how "the gods, angels, monsters, powers and principalities...began their retreat into the subsidiary realms where they reside today, harmless and unmoving, most of them anyway, for most of us, most of the time."

At least while you read Crowley, you can feel the sense of wonder you had as a child when possibility was almost endless. Those angels and monsters come briefly alive as the author fights for and embodies the transforming power of language.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Great Secret, April 27, 2007

By 

Crowley Fan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Endless Things: A Part of Aegypt (Hardcover)

Crowley ends his four-volume novel poignantly and satisfyingly. The theme of the entire book is our knowledge that life is different than it seems--a knowledge inspiring, in our great need, our gods, utopias, spirits, magics, conspiracies, true loves. The ultimate inadequacy of these dreams' every flicker, yet the final truth of the flame, is my flickering take on the message. But, fittingly, life is even more pervasive here than thoughts above life.

Much should be compared with his earlier masterpiece Little, Big, the end especially.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A multifaceted, humanizing, and magnificent sendoff to an epic saga., February 6, 2008

By 

Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Endless Things: A Part of Aegypt (Hardcover)

The fourth novel and dearly-anticipated conclusion to the Aegypt series, Endless Things finishes the saga of historian Pierce Moffitt, whose far-reaching theory that, at infrequent times, the essential nature of the world alters; for example, a world that is (and always has been) regulated by the laws of physics can suddenly and transform into a world that is (and retroactively, always has been) regulated by the laws of magic. Endless Things wraps up the many side effects of one such transformation that unfolded in the previous novels, yet Pierce's theory of cyclical historical change is ultimately a source of hope - since if the universe itself is capable of endless change, so too are the downtrodden individuals living within it. A multifaceted, humanizing, and magnificent sendoff to an epic saga.