Powers Tim

Reviews & Overviews by Rod Cameron

The Anubis Gates - Tim Powers

I missed this one when it first came out. Recently, it was being raved about in some review on Amazon, so I tracked down a copy. What an excellent story! It concerns Brendan Doyle, a modern day expert on English literature at the beginning of the 19th century, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in particular, who becomes involved with an attempt to travel back in time to watch one of Coleridge's lectures. The time-travel is enabled by ancient Egyptian magic, being used by magicians in an attempt to engineer the fall of the British Empire. And who don't take kindly to their magic being used for different purposes.
Doyle rapidly becomes separated from his party and immersed in the low-life of London in the 1810s, including Horrobin the Clown who presses beggars to work, often breaking their limbs for a better effect. And Dog-Face Joe the werewolf who continues a murderous reign of terror. Doyle's plans to return to the 20th century are based on his hero William Ashbless who does not appear to exist. What follows for the penniless Brendan Doyle is a fantastic nightmare roller-coaster of a voyage through a period of history populated by the grotesque and the dangerous.
Difficult to put down once started, The Anubis Gates is a classic work of Fantasy, which should be on everyone's bookshelf.

Publisher: Orbit
Date: 1983
Pages: 464 pages
Price: £6.99
Format: Paperback
Reviewed by: Rod Cameron
Date Reviewed: May 2001