Definitely a really fun fantastical read. Tim Power probably at
his best with wacked-out time travel stories, and that's precisely what this
is. He basically took the entire collection of English-language literary devices
and tossed them into one book. Basically it is a story about time travel. It reminded me
a lot of the Doomsday books by Connie Willis which is one of the best books I have ever read so I mean this a treat most
definitely. The method of travelling is very original and the purpose very
devious. Having travelled our hero spends a large part of the book living
in the past and often suffering accordingly. We meet Coleridge and Lord Byron
and travel geographically as well as time wise. Magic comes into play but it is
a very flawed magic and does not always behave as it should. Occasionally
I must admit it all got too smart for me and I got a bit lost as to who was
who. Overall a clever, epic story. Time travel, body swapping, Dickensian
London, Egyptian mythology, Romantic poets, evil wizards and exploration of
fatalism, props to Tim Powers for managing to combine all this into something
that wasn’t bad because with all these factors things can get messy and just
not good. Good story, good characters, great settings and ideas, and the ending
was my favorite part. I haven't read a time travel book in a long time, but
loved this one, as the descriptions of London in 1812 were very rich. I loved
how Lord Byron and other famous poets were running around, and the descriptions
of all the beggars were fascinating.
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