Tim Powers, "The Anubis Gates"

I'm on at least my fifth copy of The Anubis Gates, because this is one of those books that I am continually giving away. Whenever I run across someone who hasn't heard of Tim Powers but should have, I give them The Anubis Gates to get started.  There are several books that could serve as a good entrance point to Powers' work.  But I suppose I have sentimental feelings for The Anubis Gates because it's the book someone gave me, way back when I admitted I had never heard of Tim Powers.

The Anubis Gates is very much an early Tim Powers work, which means that it's a little rough around the edges compared to his later books.  It also serves as a stand-alone work, falling outside the shared world Powers created and explored later in his career.  This also means that it can be a little bit easier for the outsider, who isn't having to constantly process the arcane and sometimes complicated details of Powers' created world.

1810 was a banner year for England.  You had Lord Byron, Samuel Coleridge, reports of an escaped orangutan (who eventually made his way into Poe's "The Murders in the Rue Morgue"), Jack the Ripper, and a thousand other crazy and wonderful events.  Early Victorian (technically, late British Regency) England is one of those places and times which captures the imagination.

Of course, to travel back in time to 1810, you would need a millionaire to pursue the relevant magical spells and items.  And you would probably want to bring along a historical scholar, to help you steer your way through it all.  (Preferably a broke one, on the outs with his colleagues, so that you can buy his silence.)

Doyle is that scholar, swept up in the path of eccentric millionaire J. Cochran Darrow.  Aside from being a Coleridge scholar, Doyle specializes in the poetry of William Ashbless, about whom little is known.  He doesn't exactly jump at the chance to travel in time so much as acquiesce reluctantly because he needs the cash.  Soon enough he finds himself kidnapped, left behind, having to rely on his own wits such as they are, and pursued by the mad magician Dr. Romany and his evil clown, Horrabin.

Powers has a gift for evoking Victorian London without all the linguistic froofaraw found in so many time travel novels.  A great deal of the fun of The Anubis Gates is being dragged around through the filthy streets of London, past the mad poets and beggar's guilds and secret societies.  Of course there isn't much time to stop and savor the sights, because The Anubis Gates proceeds at a breathless pace - sometimes a little too breathless, honestly - but it does keep the momentum going, body-swapping werewolves and all.

It's difficult for me to believe that The Anubis Gates was first published in 1983.  It's indicative of the quality of the story and the writing that it hasn't aged a bit, and in fact is still republished new every few years.