Book Review

WHEN WOULD YOU LIKE TO GO TODAY? A REVIEW OF THE ANUBIS GATES

copyright 2003 by Nora M. Mulligan

A good book will divert you for the time you're reading it. A very good book will have scenes and bits that come back to you and amuse you or move you after you've read it. A great book will keep you enthralled the whole time you're reading it, come back to haunt you when you least expect it, and change the way you look at normal things forever after. By that standard, The Anubis Gates, by Tim Powers, is a great book indeed.

To call this wild carnival of fiction a time travel novel is to do it an injustice. You could call it science fiction, or you could call it fantasy. � You could even (stretching the point a bit) call it historical fiction, since much of the book occurs in the early 19th century in England. But really, no category can contain a book this protean, this entertaining.

There are almost too many characters and subplots to describe, but the basic arc of the book follows Brendan Doyle, a modern American man, a scholar in the life of an obscure English poet of the Romantic period, one William Ashbless. Doyle is invited by a very rich and eccentric man to act as a speaker and sort of guide to a group of time travelers who are going to meet with Samuel Coleridge (he's one of the people I will never see the same way again after reading this book) at a small inn in London on a particular night. How could he resist? How could anyone resist such an invitation, assuming that it's for real and not a prank? Of course Doyle accepts, and of course he finds himself in 19th century London with the rest of his group, and of course they meet Samuel Coleridge exactly where he's supposed to be, but from that point on, nothing turns out as Doyle expects. He finds himself kidnapped and trapped in this past century, where he has no discernible skills and no knowledge of the lay of the land, or which people he should trust and which he shouldn't. This is especially unfortunate because there are some other people working in this time period who are responsible for the holes in time, and who are not pleased to have other time travelers jumping in and out of the past. Doyle initially wants to get back to his own time, but when that proves more and more difficult, he focuses his attention on surviving, and that becomes much more complicated than anyone would have expected, what with evil disfigured clowns, doubles for Lord Byron (another person I will never consider in quite the same way again), mysterious Egyptians who are plotting the downfall of the British royalty (among other things), a young woman disguised as a man, and a body stealing werewolf, to say nothing of other members of the original time traveling party who show up here and there with interesting effects.

One of the most brilliant ideas in the book is the character of Dog-Face Joe, the aforementioned body stealer. For reasons too complicated to go into here, he is both a werewolf and a man who can take over someone else's body. He's responsible for many deaths (of people whose bodies he's used and discarded when they begin to show the characteristic hairiness; the victim's own family and friends are unable to recognize him or her and usually kill him or her in their terror), and in the course of the book, his path crosses Doyle's several times, with the result that the person in Doyle's body is often not Doyle himself.

Confusing? It gets better. The Egyptians who caused these holes in time have the ability to make an animated ka of a person, a sort of living clay substitute, an exact replica which knows everything the person knows and can act independently. I wouldn't dream of giving away too much of this plot, but suffice it to say that Lord Byron, Doctor Romanelli (one of the villains of the piece) and Doyle himself all have, at one point or another, a ka running around, substituting for him.

The plot is convoluted and sometimes confusing; it's not a book to read in spurts, but a book to dive into and devour, stopping occasionally to let your brain rest from the bizarre time travel paradoxes and the mind-boggling identity questions that Powers raises so entertainingly.

You will never hear the Beatles' song "Yesterday" the same way after you've read this book. You will never see an Egyptian exhibit in a museum the same way; you will never think about the Romantic poets the same way again. The Anubis Gates is a rattling good read, a roller coaster ride, funny and horrible, engrossing and gross, brilliant and fast-moving. Open the gate and prepare to have your mind bent.