Product Description

Brendan Doyle is a twentieth-century English professor who travels back to 1810 London to attend a lecture given by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This is a London filled with deformed clowns, organised beggar societies, insane homunculi and magic. When he is kidnapped by gypsies and consequently misses his return trip to 1983, the mild-mannered Doyle is forced to become a street-smart con man, escape artist, and swordsman in order to survive in the dark and treacherous London underworld. He defies bullets, black magic, murderous beggars, freezing waters, imprisonment in mutant-infested dungeons, poisoning, and even a plunge back to 1684. Coleridge himself and poet Lord Byron make appearances in the novel, which also features a poor tinkerer who creates genetic monsters and a werewolf that inhabits others' bodies when his latest becomes too hairy.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #399777 in Books
• Published on: 1997-07-03
• Binding: Paperback
• 464 pages

About the Author
Tim Powers was born in 1952; the son of an attorney. He graduated from California State University in 1976 and since then has written more than a dozen highly acclaimed and award-winning novels, including the Fantasy Masterwork THE DRAWING OF THE DARK.

Customer Reviews

Jam packed book
I can honestly say that I've never read a book so, so jam packed with different ideas, plots and congruent storylines, its a work of genius.

The central themes and ideas, socerous intrigue behind political fates, fortunes and national ascendency, werewolves, transmigration of the soul, time travel, victorian underworlds of beggar gangs and cut throats, will be familiar but here they all occur simultaneously.

However its managed very well and its never overwhelming or hard work, I was recommended this book as a steampunk archetype, it certainly does fit that genre (although there arent any derigibles or blimps) and in many ways it could fit as easily the category of science fiction as fantasy.

A throughly enjoyable and very well paced read with great characterisation, you will really feel for the protagonists and antagonists, full of surprises from beginning to end.

Incredibly well thouhjt out, intricate plot
This book is populated by some incredibly sinister villains and unlikley heroes. The plot is complex and keeps you on you toes. it has so many strands which you know will come together, but they do so in unexpected and satisfying ways. Power's best book by a mile! It bears rereading every few years.

Open Those Gates - Let the Sorcery Begin!
IT'S ALL HERE FOLKS!
A time-travelling expert on early 19th century poets travels back to 1810, confronting beggars, sorcerers, body-swappers, plots and counter-plots, and even Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The tale moves intriguingly between the many characters, and the backdrop of a dingy, dark London, enhances this supernatural thriller.

The only downside, from my point of view, was keeping track of some of the characters, as the body-swapping and sometimes duplication (Ka) of one or two of them, on occasions had me back-tracking the pages to keep up with it. But that could just be me.

For time-travel fans it's one to consider, but there's more dastardly intrigue and sorcery than anything else.