This is a worthy second book in the series that started with Island in the Sea of Time.

I don’t rate it quite as highly as I do the first one, but mainly because of its position in the series. It makes the transition from "Islands" in a professional and entertaining way. There is plenty of action, plenty of well thought out technological development, and interesting interactions between Islanders and locals. It focuses heavily on the politics and cultures of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. There are a lot of unknowns in this area when you go as far back as this, but the author seems to have definitely done his homework. I enjoyed reading this book a great deal. At the same time, more so than "Islands", this is very definitely a part of a larger story, not a story in and of itself. I wish it had been a little more self-contained. I also had a minor quibble with one scene. Stirling has an elephant charging a group of people ‘at the speed of a racehorse’. It’s a well written, dramatic scene, but elephants just don’t move that fast. They can move fast for an animal of that size, but probably no more than 15 miles per hour at the fastest. On the other hand, he more than makes up for that little problem with a very entertaining runaway moa bit at the beginning of the book. I want to emphasize, the quibbles are minor and the book is a solid, entertaining read. I recommend it.

This is an older book that I happened to get out and read again not too long ago. It isn’t really quite an alternate history, but the main character attempts and fails repeatedly to create alternate histories over a period of over ten thousand years, so I guess I’d call it close enough. It seems that in the fairly near future a time machine has been invented. It can only go back to certain eras, and it can only visit each era once. The first of those visits is led by a mysterious man who seems to be in the prime of his life, but at the same time slips once-in-a-while and uses phases that seem to come from a long time before—as early as the late 1800’s. Mysteries keep piling up as the expedition continues. He got to be commander of the expedition through a series of mysterious events. He is capable of going out barefoot with a spear and hunting as well as the natives of the time do. He seems to understand the natives extremely well. The solution to all of these mysteries is typical Phillip Jose Farmer, which in this case makes for an excellent story.

Farmer hasn't done much lately, but there was a time when he did some really good stuff. The World of the Tiers books are among my favorites. So are the first two Riverworld books. The Ancient Opar books are also good in an Edgar Rice Burroughs sort of way. Farmer also did some pure AH’s, along with some stuff like Image of the Beast that is okay science fiction but is also frankly fairly hard core pornography--not for the easily offended.

Farmer’s stuff sometimes seems hard to find, especially the science fiction/pornography cross-overs. I still haven’t been able to find real copies of books two and three of his Nazis on Venus series, though I did read part of a Xerox copy of three. If you get past the implausible stuff like 1940’s era rockets doing a one-way to Venus, and somebody being able to spoof all of the subsequent observations on Venus, even with a time machine, books one and four aren’t bad. The idea of someone trying to give humanity a brand new planet by altering the early development of Venus is a unique point of divergence. Adding in Nazis is an interesting, ironic touch. I’ll have to do a dedicated review of the two books I have one of these times.

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