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Best book I've read in years - maybe since the last thing I've read of his, Little, Big. Crowley is able to write in such a way as to make things beautiful: he reminds me of Fellini in setting up relatively mundane characters, places and scenes and creating a surreal, vivid and perfect dream of them. I tried to only read a few pages at a time, so that the book wouldn't end as fast.

"When Doctor Dee took his shoulder, everything in the glass - the ship, the child, the powers, the depths - closed up one after another as though he hurtled backward away from them through curtains rapidly drawn: backward through the window, through the showstone in the armed child's hand, through the row of strong young men in green whose names all began with A (seeming startled and windblown just for a moment, looking on one another, before a hand - it was the skryer's own - drew a bright curtain over them and they too were gone), and he fell backward into the upper chamber at Mortlake and the night: the real globe of smoky quartz came into view, and his own hand before it was the curtain drawn over it; he was groaning, and Doctor Dee waa helping him to his feet and to a chair."

"There were angels in the glass, two four six many of them, they kept pressing in one by one, always room for one more; they linked arms of clasped their hands behind them and looked out at the two mortals who looked in at them. They were all dressed in green, and wore fillets or wreaths of flowers and green leaves in their loose hair; their eyes were strangely gay, and their names all began with A."

The book is set about 65% in the US in the 70s or 80s, and the rest following the history of Renaissance magic, via Doctor Dee and Giordano Bruno. The US bits are not that exciting per se but very cozy; the Renaissance bits are just so fucking cool.

It's not an easy book, but it's a rewarding one. If you want something challenging and immensely beautiful, read it.