A review of The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers

Title: The Anubis Gates

Author: Tim Powers

Publisher: Ace Books (reprint from 1983)

Cover art (Jean-Francois Podevin): It's not bad... exactly... but it does look like the cover of some Egyptian strategy board game than a book cover.

Length: 387 pages in trade paperback

Rating

4 out of 7 (It's tough to give a mediocre rating to a celebrated author and a popular book... but honestly it can't stack up with some of the greats)

Rebuttal: Mervius of Fantastica Daily

Similar Books of Speculative-Comedic Adventurers with Classically Trained Protagonists: Ilium (Simmons), The Lecturer's Tale (Hynes), Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (Clarke), The Early History of Ambergris (VanderMeer), 

"My two earliest books were both written and published when I was 23 years old, and necessarily they look like the work of a fairly naïve, narrow young man. I do think that for a 23 year old they're pretty good. I like to think that the stuff is improving. It always seems like the one book of mine that people have heard of, if they've heard of any of my books, is The Anubis Gates. Which is certainly okay with me -- I don't mind if that turns out to be the only book anybody ever happens to pick up"

--Tim Powers, interview with SFsite.com Kim Fawcett

You know, for as hard as we are on this book, it’s still a tremendous accomplishment. We at first made the mistake that Powers was referring to Gates, which is not the case (thank you, John Murray, for pointing that out) and this would indeed have been a stunning achievement for a 23 year old. Still, one of the words he uses to describe those earlier works: "narrow," describes our feeling about Gates. It's inventive, superlative writing that appeals to a large audience but  when stacked against the best literature the genre produces it is wanting in depth. But there is still  much promise and now that we've been introduced to Powers, we will certainly investigate more of his books.

"It's strange that this is perhaps the best ever novel involving time-travel yet it isn't actually SF. Yes it uses some of the appartus [sic] of SF but the purpose is purely to provide the means in which to set a mad adventure. Mad adventure is I think the only term that can convey the style of this book. This is Fantasy in it's purest form, nothing is believable and you'll never question it once, you'll be too busy enjoying it"

--Ian Parnham, parnham.members.beeb.net

Well, yeah. We agree. It’s a very fun adventure. Even a mad adventure. We’re not sure, exactly, about why it shouldn’t qualify as SF since it does, in fact, involve time-travel (a purely speculative event) but we suppose with the werewolves, Egyptian magic, and other occult arts Parnham is trying to draw a distinction between fantasy elements and SF elements. Genre distinctions aside, however, the fact of the matter is having a very fun, mad-cap adventure just isn’t enough to make great literature and shouldn’t be enough to warrant the top-rating from a reviewer. Powers isn't really trying to explore any deep metaphysics but a lack of ambition doesn’t lessen our disappointment with the book.

We’ve delved back a bit and reached for this book published 20 years ago as of the writing of this review. Powers is a respected author and his name has been mentioned several times by people writing in to this website. Gates is considered to be one of—if not the—best work he’s done. And to an extent, we agree: there is some tremendous talent here… but when we got to the end we couldn’t get away from the idea that he was just playing at this game of writing rather than doing something earnestly important.

Gates opens (after a compelling prologue) with a charmingly mundane scholar of English literature named Brendan Doyle. He is traveling to London at the behest of a rich entrepreneur, J. Cochran Darrow. Doyle is that bitingly realistic caricature of the liberal arts professor toiling in ignominy within the academies of the late 20^th century (and contemporary!) colleges. Lacking any better pursuit, he is studying the obscure romantic poet William Ashbless (put your anthologies away: Ashbless is a joint fictional invention by Tim Powers and James Blaylock under whose name they have published On Pirates and The William Ashbless Memorial Cookbook--a bit confusing since the genuine authors Samuel Taylor Coleridge and George Gordon, Lord Byron both make an appearance).

Gates is a novel of time travel. Doyle travels with Darrow's group back in time to the era in which he is supposedly a learned expert. But he will becomes separated from the protection of Doyle and—friendless and powerless—he attempts to survive in this time where--in a stunning example of the abstract theories of academies meeting the harsh realities of the reified world--he is hopelessly naïve. In due course, the plot thickens to include the customary intrigues of rich and powerful men attempting immortality with a healthy dose of dark magic from ancient Egypt.

Powers is at his absolute best with Doyle. His antics prior to and during his interview with Darrow, his subsequent acceptance of the commission as an expert of Coleridge, and his feeble—at first condescending and later desperate—attempts at making a living on his own at the turn of the 19^th century London are immersed with that Divine Laughter that makes comedy of the absurdities of everyday life. Doyle has a distinctly American mix of cynicism and optimism in his pursuits that is thrilling, engaging, and demands great sympathy from a reading audience.

Equally powerful is Powers’ portrayal of “Jacky”; a young woman disguised investigating the death of her betrothed and loyal friend to Doyle. Behind these strong characters is a tremendous supporting cast—all beautifully rendered—that include an evil clown, doppelgangers, tavern-owners, and, of course, poets Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Lord Byron himself. The reader is treated with a volatile parade of creatures that do not exhibit the customary imperfections (so common in speculative fiction) of perfection in either virtue or vice—nor that equally common Byronic hero who hides his virtue behind a seemingly impenetrable mask of amorality—but rather real people striving for goals as much out of momentum and sentimentality as purpose and rife with all the minor errors, frustrations, and snafus that beset all grand aims.

Powers’ skill as a descriptive writer is immeasurably strong. His characters caper about in scenes drawn with the subtlety and power of a master painter. Even better than the painting is the noise! Screams “abrade the walls” and the prose is a cacophony of sounds: screams, thumps, voices, splashes... so often, writers forget to infuse their works with sound but Powers' Gates is shrill and exciting. His skill is breathtaking in prose form and there are few writers who can match him in this capacity.

So why the mundane score of 4? Most of it comes from sheer disappointment in the outcome. The writing and action are strong enough to make it an exceptional thrill ride worthy of a score of 5 like many other action-oriented narratives (Ender’s Game and Wizard’s First Rule for example). Most of the novel is read with a fervid hunger for explanation and motivation. There is a great deal of potential with the novel as Doyle begins to lead his second life in the face of certain knowledge of the future (a theme much more skillfully treated in Chiang’s heart-wrenching story The Story of Your Life in his collection after the same name). Numerous opportunities exist to explore the paradoxes invoked with time travel to the past—and are even mentioned in a few places—but Powers never reaches even that depth explored by a routine Star Trek episode where worlds or humanity is saved with a temporal deus ex machina.

All this potential and there is nothing in the novel exploits that potential. It’s extremely disappointing to reach the end of this novel and think to onself, “Why did I read this thing? Why did Powers write it?” It’s like a really well-tied fly made by a proud fly fisherman: it’s pretty, it’s takes great skill, but the spectator is left a bit numb if not numbered among one of the elect of the Cult of Fly-fishers.

This book has staying power. The fact that you can find it—20 years after publication—still on the shelves of many bookstores is a testament to the book’s charms and they are many. But the book still has to invoke some kind of interest and it can’t touch on high themes and leave them unexplored without invoking some displeasure from the reader. It’s a tease… and being teased and unfulfilled is no fun.

It is, perhaps, a bit unfair to judge the merits of a time-travel novel published in 1983 so many years later when time travel elements are so commonly featured in so many different works in speculative fiction. Still, for all the charm and skill in this book—and they are considerable—the work is still not strictly memorable in the sense of a story getting under the reader’s skin and affecting the way he sees his life around him. The book has not changed the way time travel is considered in speculative fiction—in fact, one could argue that this theme is actively ignored. Gates is, in the end, an action novel with the trappings of a time-travel setting. In all honesty, time-travel isn't even a requirement of this plot: the book could just have easily been set in the contemporary era, entered the genre of horror, invoked the same dark magic with the same popularized villains We say this because Powers doesn’t make us think any differently about London, about the Romantic era of English literature, or even Egyptian magicians. For as much as we liked the book—looking at it from the perspective of a critic we can’t say it has changed anything about the genre.

There are many occasions where people simply want a skillfully told and engaging tale to read: a vacation book. If this is what you’re looking for and you have a bent for Romantic poetry, Egyptian mythology, or a spot of time travel, then it would be hard to do better than pack up this book in your carry-on suitcase for relief from the squalling urchins that infest the backs of passenger airplanes. While not as good, people who enjoyed Ilium by Dan Simmons, The Lecturer’s Tale by James Hynes, and even portions of City of Saints and Madmen by Jeff VanderMeer, may find some of their interests in seeing academicians portrayed in heroic situations satisfied. There will be a substantial number of people who will disagree with our review based upon their love of his prose, his characters, and the ease with which the book speaks to them—and in fact, we agree!—but we also maintain that it will not be one of the more ultimately fulfilling books of their lives.

One of the closes parallels to this book is Ilium. If the notion of reading the ancient past revisted upon a modern (or future) situation is compelling to you, then go to Simmons first who commits entirely to the genre, his theme, and the importance of literature. To find your intellectualism explored to the utmost, then Gene Wolfe’s Latro in the Mist and The Book of the Short Sun are far, far superior. This is a good book, not a great book. To enjoy it, you must have a strong commitment to speculative fiction and not expect to find a great work of literature that can go toe-to-toe with the works of any author in any genre.