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The Anubis Gates

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About this listen

Brendan Doyle is a twentieth-century English professor who travels back to 1810 London to attend a lecture given by English romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge. This is a London filled with deformed clowns, organised beggar societies, insane homunculi and magic.

When he is kidnapped by gypsies and consequently misses his return trip to 1983, the mild-mannered Doyle is forced to become a street-smart con man, escape artist, and swordsman in order to survive in the dark and treacherous London underworld. He defies bullets, black magic, murderous beggars, freezing waters, imprisonment in mutant-infested dungeons, poisoning, and even a plunge back to 1684.

Coleridge himself and poet Lord Byron make appearances in the novel, which also features a poor tinkerer who creates genetic monsters and a werewolf that inhabits others' bodies when his latest becomes too hairy.

©2005 Tim Powers (P)2025 Orion Publishing Group Limited Fantasy Historical Fiction Science Fiction Steampunk Time Travel Magic England
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Classic Tim Powers. Who else can combine time travel, romantic poets, magic and ancient Egyptian gods.

Revisiting an old favourite.

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I have been waiting for this to show up on Audible ever since I joined back in the mists of time. The Anubis Gates is a work of genius; time travel, strange Egyptian magic, romantic poets, late 18th/early 19th century London with all it's crooks and beggars, damned peculiar creatures.... honestly, I can't recomend this highly enough and it's every bit as good as it was when when I first read it many years ago, My only regret is that I can't read it for the first time ever again, and in a way, this relates to one of the books themes. I have some small issues with the narration in that he's American (or Canadian... or maybe Antipodean?). This makes sense i suppose - Tim Powers is a citizen of the USA and the protagonist is also American so fair enough. However, the story is set largely in London and features any number of folk from the underclass of ther rookeries and backstreets. this calls for something cockney adjacent of which the reader makes a reasonable fist but sometimes he gets it a bit wrong. He also makes no attempt to give the Egyptian or gypsy characters any kind of accent. I say this as a heads-up; it didn't spoil the experience of enjoying this fabulous romp of a book for me but if it's the kind of thing that gets on yout nerves here's your advisory notice. If you like fantasy novels you owe it to yuorself to listen to this masterwork!

At Last!

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