Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

The Anubis Gates is a glorious mess of a novel. Sprawling and convoluted, it introduces one theme after another, after another. Evil Egyptian sorcery meets time travel, meets serial killer werewolf, meets serial body swapping, meets the Romantic Poets (Coleridge and Byron) meets an evil clown led beggars guild. It is a hidden history, a time travel story, a tale of supernatural conspiracy, and an action adventure. Strangest of all, each of these disparate themes converge like a fantastically complex Chinese puzzle, fitting together as one wildly complex story.

When I first read The Anubis Gates in 2005 I was dazzled by it’s over-busy complexity. But little of it stuck with me. Other Powers novels made a lasting impression, and drew me back for multiple rereads over the years, but The Anubis Gates remained vague in my mind, and only my project to review all of Powers works drew me back to it. What I found on this reread was flawed brilliance, with the flaws at least as prominent as the brilliance.

The flaws show up immediately. Powers takes a long time to set up his story and get it moving. The introduction (temporal location 1805) sets up the central villains and their creepy conspiracy without giving any clarity. Chapter One leaps us forward to 1983, and introduces us to our less than impressive hero, and puts us through a lot of dialogue to set up the time travel scenario. All of this is essentially extended prologue, as the heart of the story doesn’t really begin until we reach 1810 London.

Ah, but it’s there that the brilliance begins! Powers� Georgian London is a masterpiece. It is a haunted place, full of shadowy magics. Horrabin, the creepy clown-sorcerer leader of a criminal beggars guild is a masterful creation who makes Dickens� Fagin appear a philanthropic solid citizen by comparison. The parts of the novel that focus on this twisted clown and his kingdom of criminal beggars are its beating heart. Had Powers focus his story solely on this plot, this would have been a horror/fantasy masterpiece.

But Powers was ambitious to the point of being unfocused. The story jumps from this creepy Georgian London back to Restoration London of the 1660s, then back again, then to Napoleonic-era Cairo. All the jumps between story threads, time periods, and locations are held together with an increasing dependence on action sequences, that don’t always make great sense, and often seem to more pad than advance the story.

I could go on noting the flaws that annoyed me, and the brilliant bits that impressed me, but you should get the picture by now. If you are a fan of Tim Powers you’re gonna like this one. I’d put it near the middle of his prolific work if I were rating it. This was an early novel, and he was still working out his style. I give it 3.5 stars rounded up.