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This was a fun book. The list I took it from has it tagged as sci-fi, which I began to doubt from, oh, about page 1. I would definitely classify this as fantasy. There is a time travel element, which I guess is why it sometimes ends up with the sci-fi classification, but it’s more magical than scientific.

In 1802, some sorcerers perform a difficult magical spell in an attempt to bring Anubis back and wipe out all of these pesky modern religions. There are some unexpected effects. Our main character, a man named Doyle, travels back in time from 1983 to 1810 (for reasons explained in the book) and accidentally gets caught up with events involving the evil sorcerers and the aforementioned unexpected events.

The story is pretty twisty, with lots of intertwined events affecting other things in a way that keeps you guessing and speculating, and with enough information provided that you can guess some of it successfully on your own while other things are a surprise. That was one thing I particularly enjoyed about it. I also enjoyed the humor; there were several times when the book made me laugh out loud.

As is typical with a book involving time travel, there is some questionable logic and things that just don’t make sense if you put much thought into them. Those things niggled at me a little bit, but didn’t really detract from the entertainment value. (view spoiler)[The poem Doyle/Ashbless wrote was one of the larger sources of questionable logic. It never actually gets created, so how did it exist in the first place? Doyle reads and memorizes it in his original timeline, then writes it from memory back in the 1800’s. His trip down the river toward the end which he believes the poem refers to happens after he’s written it from memory. I guess one could say that there was an original timeline, when Ashbless had never existed and then Doyle was born and went back in time for the first time. Maybe that time, he first wrote the poem after his experience down the river. But his belief in the existence of Ashbless affected so many of the events, and it was clearly defined that certain things were to happen at a certain time, so it’s hard to believe he would have ended up on that river otherwise. (hide spoiler)]