I really wanted to like this book. The premise was intriguing, and the first few pages really drew me in. Unfortunately, the farther along in the book I read, the less I seemed to like it.

On a positive note, Powers handled the time travel aspects of the novel with expert skill. He managed to weave all of the moving parts together with seamless precision, and managed to do so without paradox. I frequently found myself flipping back into the story to put the pieces together, and to reconcile the early clues with the revelations that came later. In that sense, I was pleased.

What lost me was everything else. Powers constantly threw characters into the story, and many of them were hastily introduced, poorly described, or ignored for a hundred pages before making a half-hearted cameo somewhere down the line. And then, as if that wasn't enough to keep up with, the body switching began. The plot itself became painfully overloaded. There was simply too much going on, and not enough plausibility (even for a sci-fi time travel novel).

This book would have done well with a hefty helping of "less is more," and I'm sorry that such a fantastic concept ended up as a bloody pulp of wasted potential. This was my first Tim Powers book. It might be my last.

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