Very few modern authors can both engage your intellect and stir your soul; even fewer can unleash your imagination. But perhaps only one writer alive today can do all that in prose that is truly awe-inspiring: John Crowley. I'd been waiting for years for Aegypt to be reissued--it says something that used copies of the first editions were going for hundreds of dollars. Finally I got my copy of Solitudes and marveled at Crowley's ability to cast a spell in only a few pages. This book takes concentration and commitment to fully appreciate, you'll also probably want to check on some other sources on topics like Hermes Trismegistus and John Dee (thank god for Wikipedia). The 1970s setting is also a bit unfortunate, as it's recent enough to carry some baggage but not recent enough for this Gen X reader to really relate to. But this book will move and transport you like nothing else out there. Find a quiet place and give it a chance.

I received this book from my daughter this past Christmas and am about 1/2 way through - I will finish it just because of who gave it to me, but I can't believe the rave reviews this book has received over the years. It has to be the most poorly written, pathetic attempt at a story that I've come across in years. I can't even figure out what the story line is, all the flashbacks sequences just seem to be the back story that should have stayed in the outline. And this guy teaches at Yale?? Hard to believe. Maybe the book will get more interesting, but right now there is nothing holding my interest and I am loath to finish it let alone get the next 2 volumes. I will update this review if the story turns itself around, but right now, it's a painful waste of time.

This is not a new addition to the Aegypt series. This is a "revised" version of Aegypt that they have renamed. If you already own Aegypt, you may want the revised version (I don't own both so don't know how much revision took place) or you may not want to spend the money.

I guess publishers rename books to try to catch the unwary. Why they can't simply add "Revised Edition" to the original title can only be for purposes of deception (IMHO). I don't like it at all.

This volume is absolutely wonderful. It is almost ridiculously fun, informative, exhilarating. Parts of it (I'm thinking especially of Pierce's flashbacks to life in New York, scattered across the first half) seem to me to be as good as--or even better than--anything in John Crowley's transcendent 1981 masterpiece, Little, Big.

The series centers on the Platonic/Gnostic notion that we're forgetting something, and that that something is our real life. It's not happening on another planet than this one: It flows through our own best, highest, most wakeful moments, and flows into the lives of others through incessant mystery. It's very easy to lose it again, to fall into routine or depression, to lose faith in ourselves and accept false external certainties, and this process is the heart of Aegypt's second and third volumes. But this first volume is one of discovery and rediscovery, of spring awakening, of following a trail of bread crumbs up the sky.

Bless Crowley for writing this book, the happy start of the ultimate romance for intelligent people.