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The First Review Of Alan Moore's Jerusalem Is Out

Published Mon, 04 Jul 2016 13:00:55 -0500

Someone has an advance copy. And a lot of time. Kirkus Reviews, the New York review magazine has the first review of Alan Moore's 600,000+ second novel, Jerusalem.

And they are very happy indeed. Which, considering the influence Kirkus holds over libraries and bookstores is a good thing for Alan Moore, considering it begins

Mind-meld James Michener, Charles Dickens, and Stephen King and you'll approach the territory the endlessly inventive Moore stakes out in his most magnum of magna opera.

And letting us know about,

Alma Warren, her name the first words in the book, is just 5 years old when we meet her, thrust into a bewildering world among people who speak a language doomed in the face of globalism: "'E ain't gunner urcha," says her mother of a fellow cowled and masked like a "phantom burglar" (shades of V), "un 'e dun't see people very orften. Goo on in un say 'ello or else 'e'll think we're rude." In this gloomy milieu of wet cobblestone streets and decaying buildings, Alma and her kin and acquaintances serve as focal points and guides.

So we begin in the past, with an unfamiliar language to deal with – though less so it seems than with The Voice Of The Fire. But like that first novel, there are more time, voices and experiences to explore.

Moore constructs a world seen from many different points of view, from wizened old masked men to reticent, fearful children and not much more confident adults in search of some measure of happiness, or at least a little sex ("He has more sperm in him than he knows what to do with and the planet circling about his axis seems to share the same promiscuous excitement").

The reviewer concludes,

Magisterial: an epic that outdoes Danielewski, Vollmann, Stephenson, and other worldbuilders in vision and depth

Expect this review to form the basis of a whole load of press release reviews ahead of the book's release in September from Liveright in the US and Knockabout in the UK.

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