|
|
|
From the Files | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
lternate worlds and temporal disasters—what better jurisdiction for a time-traveling police force overseen by the Greek god Apollo? These marvels and more besides await readers in From the Files of the Time Rangers by Richard Bowes.
Apollo's Time Rangers are busily engaged in staving off a host of cataclysmic events, all while trying to bend the future away from an era when machines will eliminate both humanity and the gods. Aided in this task by Zeus, Eros and Hermes, the Rangers face equally determined divine opposition from Dionysius and Ares. Humans—especially human children—are recruited to serve as both partners and pawns of the gods. Plucked from timestreams where history has gone terribly wrong, these orphans are trained as Rangers and oracles, as informants and puppets ... even as agents of Death.
The main focus of the Rangers' activity, though, is a boy named Timothy Macauley, a young hero from a dynasty of politicians with close ties to the gods. Tim, it is hoped, may hold the key to preventing the bleak and lifeless future foreseen at the far end of the timestream. Before he can fulfill that destiny, Tim must first be saved from a number of mishaps and assassination attempts, from sex scandals to plane crashes and even a wild night out with the Bacchae.
An altered 20th century
The Golden Age title of this novel may evoke rocket ships and space dogs, but From the Files of the Time Rangers is a different animal entirely. Richard Bowes has done a masterful job of weaving acclaimed stories like "Mask of the Rex" and "Godfather Death" into what he calls a "mosaic novel," an unarguably fractured but nonetheless coherent whole. The mystical elements of his story mesh beautifully with the more familiar tropes of time travel and temporal meddling, coming together in unexpected and even poetic ways.
The book's jumble of characters and overlapping storylines is occasionally confusing. Characters flash on and offstage in a blink, vanishing from the story only to appear decades later in aged and altered personas. Whether this is problematic is a matter for each reader to decide according to their individual taste: The plot is not flawed, just exquisitely subtle. A more serious complaint lies with the fact that the book's major players are all male: There are women aplenty in From the Files of the Time Rangers, but their roles are supportive.
The Time Rangers' mission as told in this novel is not the story of one person's journey—though concern for the rise of Macaulay hovers in the background of every storyline, the Chosen One himself is rarely seen. Rather, what Bowes creates is a detailed, behind-the-scenes depiction of the massive group effort that goes into making a great leader. It is a vision whose parallels to real-world politicians, with their dependence on TV sound bites and good spin doctors, are obvious. In this fantastic treatment of a political phenomenon, each shift and adjustment to time is intricate and fascinating, with effects that add up in ways that are alternately delightful and heartbreaking.
Bowes teases, intrigues and thrills with his shuffle of timelines and mystic events, wrapping the whole package in prose so musical its effect is almost hypnotic. From the Files of the Time Rangers is a marvelous dream of a book, one whose currents draw readers out into deep waters with no promise of a return to shore.
Having read many of these stories as they originally appeared, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the rediscovery of this complicated and—at times—mystifying world. —A.M.D.
Also in this issue: The Life of Riley, by Alexander Irvine
|
 |
|
| Home |
Copyright © 1998-2006, Science Fiction Weekly (TM). All rights reserved. Reproduction in any medium strictly prohibited. Maintained by scifiweekly@scifi.com. |
