Endless Things: A Part of ÆGypt

After finishing Daemonomania (volume 3 of the Aegypt Cycle), I thought I had some idea of how this tetrology would end. What foolish, foolish thinking! This is Crowley, where the shortest distance between Point A and Point B is not a straight line. In fact, it may be impossible to get from A to B. But - if you could somehow get to B, it may be possible to get to A. There are those things in life which we are sure are true - sometimes they really are. There are those we hope are true - sometimes they really aren't. There are those that aren't true but should be - sometimes we only dream. Through the four volumes we've followed a nebulous storyline, and hoped for understanding. Sometimes understanding is just out of reach. But even if this written story is over, the journey it laid out for us doesn't have to end. This one will stay with me. Oh, Sam, what happened to that shiny .... (Is the Cycle really done?)

First, Endless Things is the final novel in the Aegypt series (The Solitudes, Love and Sleep, Daemonomania). Do not read this novel if you have not read the preceding three. There are two kinds of book series -- those with connected but stand-alone novels (Roth's Zuckerman books, Updike's Rabbit novels) and those that, while published separately, are really one long novel (The Lord of the Rings). Although the Aegypt series falls between these extremes, it is much closer to being the latter type -- one immense novel. Reading Endless Things as a stand-alone is like starting Tolkien's epic with The Return of the King. If you have read the other three, Endless Things may at first seem to be a bit of a let-down. It is not the climax of the series -- it is a coda. This is like a soft diminuendo after the sturm und drang that came before. After the soaring heights of the previous novels, Crowley brings us gently down to earth. The five stars are for the complete Aegypt sequence -- Endless Things simply can not be evaluated alone.

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.

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.

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.