The Book of All Hours: Difference between revisions

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''Vellum'' is the first half of an epic story cycle with the overall title of ''The Book of All Hours'', as well as the name given to the substrate of reality within the multiverse of the book upon which all of reality is written. All possibilities coexist within the Vellum - it is a geological complex of the past, the present and the future; of the parallel realities; of realized and unrealized possibilities; of entire worlds built upon the bones of dead stories and unrealized decisions. This metaphysical complexity is reflected in the literary complexity of the stories the author [[Hal Duncan]] has created.

In a segment of this multiverse not unlike our own world, a race of post-humans who call themselves "Unkin" have the ability to manipulate reality, the Vellum itself, through the concise and powerful language called "the Cant" - the language that shaped reality itself on the surface of the Vellum. Originally the Unkin used their ability to lord it over mere mortals - they were the gods, the angels, the demons of our earliest mythologies. Then, several thousand years ago a republican faction led by Metatron (formerly the human Enoch) deposed the most powerful of the Sovereigns proclaiming themselves gods and dedicated themselves to bringing order to the world. But they did not win an outright victory, and for millennia they have been engaged in a heavenly cold war.

 

Thomas is hunted down and killed in one reality after another, Seamus is captured and... interrogated. Phreedom manages to make a deal with Metatron that leads to the death of another unaligned, ancient, Unkin. But that death has unexpected repercussions...

 

The second half of the story, ''Ink'', takes place after Metatron's release of his bitmites - hybrids born from a union between nanotechnology and the engraved souls of the dead - where everything has changed. Trying to create the worlds of human imagination, the bitmites have torn reality apart in the Evenfall and cast the shade of Hinter over the entire Vellum. Small enclaves of civilization, ruled by scattered Unkin, remain, stuck in an eternal present - in these barren lands, Reynard's little troupe of actors stages a mystery play for a duke of hell; in a different fold of the Vellum the futurist movement has given the rivaling fascists a run for their money as Jack enlists his brother, master thief Reinhardt von Strann, to steal a magical artifact that is supposed to help him rewrite the course of history; and an eternity later, a small squad of inter-dimensional adventurers, whom we got to know, in other lives, as the Troupe D'Reynard, prepare for their ultimate mission: to secure the final draft of The Book of All Hours and keep the rogue angels from creating their god of wrath from its pages. The final battle takes place in 1929, in a city that was once known as Sodom, about to be destroyed yet again. But this time, Mad Jack Carter is determined that even if he can't save the people of Sodom, he will find the one reality, the one possibility where one man is allowed to live: Tammuz, Thomas Messenger, the eternal victim of the ever-raging war.

 

 

 

 

In the end, ''The Book of All Hours'' is a furious lament, a work of love and anger. It's very much about reality; not only in a metaphorical sense, but in its address of very real human experiences. Within the pages of ''Vellum'' and ''Ink'', we are reminded that there's something out there that is dwarfing the richness, the reality, the terror and the complexity of whole works of literary construction - the world, and human life.

* [[God Guise]]: The Unkin.

* [[Language of Magic]]: the [[Rewriting Reality|Cant]] itself. The metaphysical language so precise, so intricate, that {{spoiler|"it can [[Equivalent Exchange|catch an atom in the interference patterns of a sound]], [[Energy Absorption|snatch the energy thrown off as waste]], and use it as a weapon". Snatching the heat out of the world to reshape reality and the Vellum. At one point in the far distant futurepast, the war between the rival Unkin factions used [[Reality Warper|the Cant]] so much that the world was in the midst of a deep ice age.}} An excellent example where words truly can [[Words Can Break My Bones|cause physical effects]].

* [[Our Monsters Are Different]]: the Unkin. they have been our [[Our Angels Are Different|angels]], our [[Our Demons Are Different|demons]], [[Our Gods Are Greater|our]] [[God Guise|Gods]] in the mythologies the world over. Due to the fact that they are/were, in origin, humans that touched the Vellum through a moment of [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|artistic/emotional/intellectual epiphany]], why do you think all those characters in the deepest stories of mankind acted so... human? And its not so much [[Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence|ascending]] as it is descending and touching the Vellum underneath reality. {{spoiler|also the point of why there is the war between the Covenant and the Sovereigns - people fighting over power, politics, greed, ambition, and in some cases horrified that there is no judeo-christian God: if there's no God, then we'll build our own idea of Heaven, a tiny outpost in the vast harsh wilderness that is the eternity of the Vellum.}}

* [[Shell-Shocked Veteran]]: Depending on which reality variant or which character iteration you're looking at, practically ALL the main characters are this at different points. Particularly Seamus/Prometheus (who is this in EVERY reality ([[Because Destiny Says So|unfortunately its a core staple of his archetype]]) and Jack Carter (in the iterations where he plays [[The Captain]]). [[Determinator|Phreedom]] ''would'' have been this except she chose the [[Screw Destiny]] route and [[Nice Job Breaking It, Hero|went AWOL]].

* [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]: doesn't even try to claim to be otherwise. It's such a mishmash of pocket universes, alternate universes, and paradox that causality can't even be seen with a telescope on a good day. Essentially - think of the universe as a huge piece of vellum on which reality has been written. Then crumple it up. Most characters make such a habit of going not just back and forth in time but also sideways, “up”, and down into the buried fossilized remains of previous overwritten realities as well.

* [[Universal Adaptor Cast]]: does this extensively. This is an interesting case, because each character is the living embodiment of an archetype superimposed upon the multiple realities. By the second book, where reality has degenerated into isolated wells of time and space in the Vellum, and the characters move from one reality well to another, they all become [[Dangerously Genre Savvy]], having absolutely no qualms about screwing all possible realities to their advantage. This results in them routinely sitting around a table and leafing through the "script" for the next reality, deciding who is going to play what.

 

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