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This was one of my favorite books back in high school, a madcap time-travel adventure, a maniacal blend of steampunk, Dickensian London, Egyptian sorcerers, villainous rival beggar gangs, real poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge & Lord Byron, fictitious Victorian poet William Ashbless, monstrous human/animal experiments lurking in the sewers below London, a body-switching werewolf, hairy ape men running mad with bleeding mouths, spoon-sized boys, and a modern-day scholar of Victorian poetry who travels back with a group of time-traveling sightseers and gets stranded. Tim Powers throws in so many disparate plot elements, grotesque villains, and non-stop action that its all a bit overwhelming, but it was an incredibly fun ride.

Thirty years later, I decided it was time to revisit one of my favorite SF/Fantasy/Horror mashups. This time I listened to the audiobook narrated by Bronson Pinchot, also known as Balki from the inane sitcom Perfect Strangers back in the 1980s. He has became a well-respected voice actor and sounds nothing like that silly character. He manages to do a huge range of accents, mostly Victorian British, and the wealth of historical details of Victorian London that Powers packs into such an action-filled story is quite an impressive achievement. Hearing so many familiar place names in London was a great pleasure.

Of course I didn't feel quite the same youthful excitement as I did three decades ago, but that is a direct result of the Heraclitus quote that starts out the book and provides a perfect metaphor for time:

“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.�

I've remembered this quote over all the intervening years, and it is completely true. Just substitute the word "book" for "river", and it perfectly describes the experience of revisiting an old favorite book. Anubis Gates remains the whirlwind time-travel/steampunk/Victorian/horror adventure I read before and is still just as enjoyable, but I am not the same teenager anymore and I was able to enjoy it differently as an adult. Sometimes I wish I could go back to that time when every book I read was a completely immersive experience, but the next best thing is to step into the river again and see what it feels like.