Vellum: The Book of All Hours by Hal Duncan

Posted on 14. Jul, 2009 by Chris Matney in Book Publishing, Book Reviews, Front Page Posts

Having spent most of the last three days reading, I feel that I’m finally caught up on my backlog of new manuscripts. However, now I’m behind on getting some of my business correspondence answered – I’m sure you know that feeling. In starting a publishing business, one of the traits listed as “most critical” for success is load balancing a variety of tasks. After ten weeks, I can concur with that sentiment. That said, several of the manuscripts that I read this weekend are very encouraging.

With my first conference call coming up in less than an hour, I guess a short book review would be appropriate for the day. Several of you have asked if I will review books that I don’t like – and there are plenty of stinkers out there. The answer is probably not right now since I am still building reviews of my one hundred favorite books. I might undertake that mission to illustrate things that I don’t like in books – such as overly stereotyped character development – but more on that in a later post.

Vellum by Hal Duncan is the first of two books that make up The Book of All Hours. The book was an impulse buy at the bookstore, I must admit. It sounded like a post-apocolyptic, cyberpunk morality tale – good vs. evil, angels vs. demons, etc. – with everything building up to a huge final nano-tech battle called Evenfall. What really struck me about the book once I cracked the cover, however, is the writing. Mr. Duncan writes in a series of vivid images strung together sometimes by the thinnest of threads. The story is not linear, but it makes sense in that vague “I’m not really sure what’s going on, but I love it” manner.

Unlike the Illuminatus! Trilogy, which, for me, became so dissociative that I didn’t care about the characters and made no attempt to figure out the story, Vellum kept building on layers of complexity and possible outcomes in a way that I found fascinating. The interplay between Phreedom Messenger, her brother Thomas, and Seamus Finnan is wonderful, allowing the characters to become tragically real in their plight across a devastated world against a seemingly unstoppable foe. Mr. Duncan also fills the books with elements of allegory and references to a wide range of existing literature. Seamus as Lucifer or Prometheus, Thomas as the archetypical victim – there are so many possibilities and so much depth.

Rarely do I feel a need to read a book again because I have missed critical points that the author is trying to make. Vellum is one of those books. However, the effort is worth the reward. A word of warning, however: you will need to read the follow-up volume Ink in order to find out how the story ends. This is not light fare, so prepare to spend some time on with this book – it will be time well-spent. Kudos to Mr. Duncan for an amazing first book.