Ink: The Book of All Hours [Deckle Edge] [Paperback]

Hal Duncan (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 27, 2007

With his stunning debut novel, Vellum, Hal Duncan shattered the boundaries between genres. Fantasy, or science fiction, Vellum shocked with the boldness of its ideas, seduced with the sensual beauty of its prose, and astonished with its imaginative sweep. Now Duncan returns with another epic tour de force that surpasses all expectations.

INK: The Book of All Hours

Once, in the depths of prehistory, they were human. But in a moment of brutal transfiguration, they became unkin, beings who possessed the power to alter reality by accessing the Vellum: a realm of eternity containing every possibility, every paradox, every heaven . . . and every hell. The Vellum became a battleground where forces of order and chaos fought across time and space. The ultimate weapon in that bloody war spanning through history and myth, dreams and memory, was The Book of All Hours, a legendary tome within which the blueprint for all reality is inscribed, a volume long lost amid the infinite folds of the Vellum.

Until, in 2017, it was found by Reynard Carter, a young man with the blood of unkin in his veins.

Until Phreedom Messenger and her brother, Thomas, were swept up in an archetypal dance of death and rebirth.

Until a hermit named Seamus Finnan found the courage to re-forge his broken soul, and a self-proclaimed angel called Metatron unleashed a plague of AI bitmites.

Now, in the aftermath of the apocalypse, several survivors search desperately for the remnants of themselves scattered across the Vellum like torn pages, determined to use the blood of the unkin to rewrite The Book of All Hours, and to forge a new destiny for themselves and all humanity. Reality will never be the same.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. This stimulating and bruising sequel to Scottish author Duncan's neo-Joycean Vellum (2006) projects the endless battle between good and evil onto a kaleidoscopic multitude of parallel alternative realities. Duncan's debut introduced bionanotech-enhanced humans, who clashed with ordinary humans in a 2017 apocalypse. The Carter family of Glasgow guarded the God-commissioned titular Book, but now the scribe and angel Metatron has hidden the Book somewhere in the infinite folds of a realm called the Vellum and is preparing to die. Meanwhile, a host of eerie characters, including foul-mouthed Jack "Flash" Carter, Puck-figure Thomas Messenger and Jack's shrink, Guy Renard Carter, search for the Book. Full of riffs on myths from throughout human history as well as allusions to Euripides'Bacchae, this enormous, stinging, poignant hymn engenders a terrible beauty all its own. (Feb.)
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From Booklist

In the sequel to Vellum (2005), the Covenant has been broken, but the angel and demon unkin still compete for power over the worlds of the Vellum. Playing out against a backdrop of futurism and fascism and little pockets of stagnant order--havens, where the bitmites make all the things humans have ever dreamed up possible--the split parts of Mad Jack, Joey Narcosis, Phreedom, and the rest of their crew seek to rewrite the Book of All Hours and bring the angels and demons to their knees for good. Duncan's multilayered storytelling--a mad ride through alternate histories of the twentieth century and beyond--makes for a complex and tangled narrative whose strands are slowly woven together to a satisfying denouement. As in Vellum, Duncan draws on classical sources in Ink, this time Euripides' Bacchae and some of Virgil's pastoral works, to great effect. Ink delivers beautifully on the promise of Vellum, with an excellent mixture of adventure, danger, and the fantastic. Regina Schroeder
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Paperback: 544 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (February 27, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345487338
• ISBN-13: 978-0345487339
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.2 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,132,205 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Hard to Read, Hard to Put Down, November 1, 2007

By 

John E. Mack (New London, Minnesota United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ink: The Book of All Hours (Paperback)

I remember when T.V. Guide used to rate televised movies that it gave a "two-star" rating to Charleton Heston's version of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" and a three-star rating to "Batman Returns." And I remember thinking that surely a second-rate "Caesar" deserved a better rating than a first-rate "Batman." I had similar thoughts about Duncan's "Ink." The book has considerable flaws -- for example, it is an incoherent mess. But its learning is so pervasive, its concept so grand, and its plotting so intricate that I hated to give it less than five stars when I have given five stars to, e.g., a Suzie Grafton mystery novel.

Perhaps the least bad way to read this book is to treat it as a series of loosely connected short stories involving the same (or similar) characters placed in different settings in different worlds. This book and its predecessor, "Vellum," is based upon the idea that the universe is a series of alternative worlds somehow connected to each other by "folds" in an overworld (or something like that -- as is often the case with this book, it is hard to tell whether Duncan's vision is inscrutably subtle or merely incomprehensible). Moreover, each of the different "worldlets" can be altered by the actions of the characters both in that world and in some other word (and apparently in the overworld as well). In turn, the worlds, the worldlets, and the overworld are somehow controlled by a book, called "The Book of All Hours" which exists, in various forms, in the various worldlets, and this book in some manner controls the fate of the world and worldlets themselves. How this plays out is a bit confusing. Finally, it appears that doing something -- it is not clear what -- with the Book of All Hours can cause the worldlets to coalesce (or collapse) into one (or perhaps more) universes.

Anyway, the characters are put through their paces in different stories in different settings in different worldlets. Whether these different stories are supposed to be simultaneous, serial, or whether the notions of time itself are irrelevant or plastic is not always clear. But it is fascinating to observe how what purports to be the same human material acts very differently in very different contexts -- a theme that has not received as much fictional treatment as one would think it deserves.

Duncan attempts to wrap all of this disparate material up in the last fifty-or-so pages. His long (too long?) denoument imagines his surviving characters in one world where they seem to enjoy one unified and rather peaceful existence. In my opinion, Duncan's mountainous plot has given birth to a mouse, but his alternative may have been to leave his magnum opus in shaggy-dog land.

Perhaps the most interest comment on Duncan's efforts was found in Fantasy and Science Fiction's review of "Vellum." The reviewer concluded that he really had to read to book over to be certain he got what it had to offer. I only wish I could be sure that Duncan has enough to offer to make the effort worth its while. Maybe T.V. Guide had it right, after all.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, November 23, 2009

By 

Maura A. Flood (Camarillo, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ink: The Book of All Hours (Paperback)

Vellum was terrific, but Ink does not live up to it. This book could have benefited from a great deal more focus on the author's part, and some serious slashing and burning on the editor's part. I did make myself read to the end of the book, because I'm like that, but it wasn't worth it. The ending was so bad that I actually threw the book across the room! Duncan may have genius, as I thought when I read Vellum, but only tiny slivers of that genius appear in Ink. An extremely disappointing follow-up.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Just not worth it, May 15, 2007

By 

R. Stephens - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Ink: The Book of All Hours (Paperback)

Just finished Ink, which I read straight after finishing Vellum. I wanted this to be a great book (although I would have settled for a really good one), but unfortunately it just feels like my time was robbed. The duology has some really cool imagery, good use of language (some might find it too flowery in places), some interesting play with history, some neat takes on religion--but despite all that, it just doesn't add up to much of anything.