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The Anubis Gates by
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Tim Powers Powers 3.96 ·
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Brendan Doyle, a specialist in the work of the early-nineteenth early-nineteenth century poet William Ashbless, reluctantly accepts an invitation from a millionaire to act as a guide to time-travelling tourists. But while attending a lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810, he becomes marooned in Regency Rege ncy London, London, where dark and dangerous forces know know about the gate s in time. Caught Ca ught ...more Want to Read Rate this b oo k
Paperback, Paperb ack, 387 pages Published Pub lished January 1st 1997 by 1997 by Ace (first published published 1983) More Details... Details...
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ABOUT T IM POWE RS
LISTS WITH THIS BOOK
Best T ime Travel Fiction Fiction
Best Steampunk Steampunk Boo ks
1,250 books — 4,049 voters
881 books — 3,944 voters
Timothy Thomas Powers is an American science fiction and fantasy author aut hor.. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels Last Call and Declare.
More Mor e lists with this book.. book.... COMMUNIT Y REVIEWS REVIEWS
Most of Powers's novels are "secret histories" : he uses actual, documented historical events featuring famous people, but shows shows another another view of them in which occult or supernatural factors heavily
influence the motivations a ...more J.G. Keely rated Keely rated it did not like it Shelves: fantasy fantasy,, abandoned abandoned,, reviewed reviewed,, steampunk
Aug 24, 2013
A fairly common mistake made by authors is failing to be familiar with their genre. They end up retreading old ground and relying on long-dead cliches because they aren't aware of what's already been done. So, So, it behooves behooves an author to get some familiarity with the genre he intends to work in, to ensure that he isn't just writing the same old story over over again. agai n.
More Mor e about Tim Powers... BOOKS BY TIM POWERS
In that spirit, I thought I'd check out this award-winning early piece of Steampunk. It was a rough start. One of the first red flags in i n an ...more 55 likes · likes ·
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Brad rated it liked it Shelves: sci-fi sci-fi,, speculative speculative,, sci-fantasy
Nov 19, 2008
More time travel than steampunk, although it has been categorized as the latter, Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates is Gates is fun, but it leaves one feeling a little shortt changed. shor The problem is that Powers' story has the narrative narrative scope of Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle, but it is packed into a mere 380-ish pages. Beggar's guilds, Egyptian wizards, Romantic poets, business magnates, and prize fighters fig hters mix with cross dressing vengeance seekers, mad clowns, body body snatchers, fire elementals and gypsies. Time s ...more 41 likes · likes ·
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Brad rated it really liked it Aug 17, 2016 Shelves: non-fiction non-fiction,, horror horror,, sci-fi sci-fi,, fantasy fantasy,, poetry poetry,, steampunk steampunk,, top-one-hundred
Re-Read 8/17/1 8/17/16 6
T RIVIA ABOU ABOUT T T HE ANUBIS ANUBIS GATES
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this a third time. :) I wanted to like this re-read a lot more than the first, but unfortunately, the things I thought were uninteresting the first time around, like the Egypt expedition, were still uninteresting, but I stuck around because all the runins with the egyptian magicians was still pretty damn wonderful. As for the first half of the novel, novel, I'd easily e asily give it i t 5 stars. I mean, where where else can you ...more 40 likes · likes ·
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Phrynne rated Phrynne rated it
· see review it was amazing
May 23, 2016
This book book was just so much fun! It was really, really entertaining e ntertaining and I have no problem giving it five stars. Basically it is a story about time travel. It reminded me a lot of the Doomsda y Book by by Connie Willis which Willis which is one of the best books books I have ever e ver read so I mean this as praise indeed. The method of travelling is very original and the purpose very devious. Having travelled our hero spends a large part of the book living in the past and often suffering accordingly. We meet Coleridge and Lor ...more 30 likes · likes ·
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Penny rated it really liked it Penny rated Jan 20, 2014 Shelves: fantasy fantasy,, science-fiction science-fiction,, scifi-and-fantasy-club-bookshelf scifi-and-fantasy-club-bookshelf,, scifi-fantasy-club2014challenge,, award-winner 2014challenge award-winner,, locus-nominee locus-nominee,, time-travel
My main feeling during the book was that it was weird. Not bad weird, not necessarily good weird, just a bit odd. I found it took a while to get into, I was never bored, bored, but I also wasn't reall reallyy all that interested for f or a large portion of of the beginning begi nning of this one. Then it started to pick up and I found I really started starte d to enjoy things once once we met Jacky and that lot.
“Thus Milton refines the question down to a matter of faith," said Coler Coleridge, idge, bringing the lecture to a close, "and a kind of faith more indepe ndent, autonomous more truly strong, strong, as a matter of fact than the Puritans really sought. Faith, he tellss us, is not an exotic bloom to be tell laboriously maintained by the exclusion e xclusion of of most aspects of the day da y to day world, nor a useful delusion to be supported by sophistries and half-truths like a child's belief in i n Father Christmas Christmas - not, in short, short, a prudently unregarded adherence to a constructed constr ucted creed; cree d; but rather must be, if anything, a clear-eyed recognition of the patterns and tendencies, to be found in every piece of the world's fabric, which are the lineaments of God. This is why religion can only be advice and clarification, clarificati on, and cannot carry any spurs of enforcement - for only belief and behavior that is independently arrived at, and then chosen, can be praised or blamed. This being the case, it can be seen as a criminal abridgement of a person's rights willfully to keep him in ig nor norance ance of any facts - no piece can be judged inadmissible, for the more stones, both bright bright and dark, that are added to the mosaic, the clearer is our picture of God.” — 13 likes “The Spoonsize Spoonsize Boys B oys steal the d ollhouse
There were a lot of interesting ideas, strange characters and weird happenings in this novel. I enjoyed it, but I'm sure I don't un ...more 26 likes · likes ·
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Carol. rated it it was ok Shelves: time-period-fantasy
Jun 06, 2011
Two and a half stars sta rs for me by the GR system; 'okay' verging on 'I liked it.' My appreciation could probably benefit from a second read. Ultimately, I can see where others liked it, but it's not executed in way I enjoyed. In some ways, it reminds me of Connie Willis' To Sa y Nothing Nothing of the Dog in Dog in that while there is some time traveling, there is very little of technological surprise, and most of it takes place within Victorian England. In similar fashion to TSNotD, a historian accidentally gets le ...more 20 likes · likes ·
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Wanda rated it liked it Wanda rated Aug 10, 2015 Shelves: speculative-fiction speculative-fiction,, time-travel time-travel,, reading-project reading-project,, 1980s 1980s,, egypt egypt,, read-in-2015 This revi ew has been hidden because because it contains contains spoilers. T o view it, click here.
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Tfitoby rated it really liked it Tfitoby rated Shelves: fantastical
· review of another edition
Apr 17, 2013
A time travel novel featuring fea turing sorcery, sorcery, evil clowns, Ancient Egyptian Gods, body switching, switching, a condensed version of of Dante, literary li terary scholars, scholars, cross cross dressing, fencing champions, dog-faced men and Romantic poets. That opening sentence lost l ost it's short, pithy, catchphrase-like nature somewhere along the way. Mirroring the novel in that way infact.
toys while the cat by the fire is curled. Then away they floats in their eggshell boats, down the drains to their underground world.” — 12 likes More Mo re quotes …
hear said poet speak only to find himself trapped in the early 19th century London,, a ...more London 16 likes · likes ·
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Dan Schwent rated it Shelves: steampunk
really liked it
Oct 07, 2009
Brendan Doyle is i s an expert on Samuel Coleridge and a contemporary of of his, William Willia m Ashbless, hired by a crazy millionaire to take part in a trip through through a hole in the river of time. Rich clients have paid Darrow, the millionaire, a million dollars each to travel back to a Coleridge lecture in 1805. Only something goes wrong, as it does in most time travel stories... Powers's writing is good without having needless descriptions. His depiction of the early 1800's is really vivid. I found a few of th ...more 14 likes · likes ·
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Martine rated it really liked it Martine rated Jan 07, 2008 Shelves: fantasy fantasy,, historical-fiction historical-fiction,, pseudo-nineteenth-century , science-fiction science-fiction,, northamerican
Ever wonder what it would be like to travel in time and be able to rewrite parts of history? In The Anubis Gates , Brendan Doyle, a professor of of nineteenth-century English literature living in 1983 California, accidentally gets to try his hand at it when he is invited by a mad scientist to attend a lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810 London. Needless to say, an accident prevents Doyle from returning to his own time (it always does in these books, books, doesn't it?), so he is stuck in early ...more 13 likes · likes ·
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rated it liked it Megan Baxt Baxt er er rated
Feb 03, 2016
What a strange book. book. I mean, really, really, really rea lly strange. It's just such a weird
my online SF group, and there's a good question here as to whether it's even science fiction. There's time travel, which would put it under that rubric, but also ancient Egyptian magicians (ooh, a new tongue twister!). And the time travel itself, now that I think about it, may not be scientific in nature. There's the suggestion that it might be ...more 12 likes · likes ·
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Sandi rated it really liked it Sandi rated Shelves: 2008 2008,, fantasy
Nov 18, 2008
"The Anubis Gates" is a terrific time travel fantasy. I never quite knew where the story story was going or what was going to happen next. Tim Powers is one of those writers who packs meaning and significance signif icance into every scene. I found myself having to backtrack several times to see if I had missed something. In the last l ast third of the book, book, there's so much body body switching and a nd name changing that I had trouble telling who was who. I really liked the challenge though, it kept me on my toes and it was unlike ...more 11 likes · likes ·
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Sarah Anne rated Anne rated it really liked it · review of another edition Aug 04, 2016 Shelves: audio audio,, sci-fi-fantasy-read sci-fi-fantasy-read,, sci-fi sci-fi,, fantasy fantasy,, historical historical,, mythology mythology,, paranormal paranormal,, sci-fi-fantasy-challenge-2016,, time-travel sci-fi-fantasy-challenge-2016 time-travel,, author-male author-male,, fantasy-dark
Such an incredibly cool book! 11 likes · likes ·
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thefourthvine rated it it was amazing thefourthvine rated Mar 09, 2016 Recommends it for: Anyone who loves time travel stories the way fetishists love their kink porn. Shelves: sff
Tim Powers is at his best with wacked-out time travel stories, and that's precisely what this is. He basically took the entire collection of Englishlanguage literary devices and tossed them into one book. And then added
some poetry. And some genderfuckery. And Ancient Egyp tian myths and legends. And, also, did I mention the time travel? So. A mild-mannered literature professor (this is, um, something of a theme character in Powers' work) work) goes back to the time ti me of Lord Byron, and - look. Things h ...more 10 likes · likes ·
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Ryan rated Ryan rated it
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it was amazing
The Good: Where do I begin? begin? This is such a clever, epic story. Time travel, body swapping, Dickensian London, Egyptian mythology, Romantic poets, evil wizards and an exploration of fatalism - props to Tim Powers for for managing to combine all this into something that wasn't absolute crap. Good story, good characters, great settings and ideas, and the ending was excellent. The Bad: It's a complicated mess at times which might diminish one's enjoyment. Plus the book starts in 1983, so I suppose the prot ...more 10 likes · likes ·
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Maria Mar ia Clara Clara rated rated it
it was amazing
· review of another edition
Aug 26, 2016
Maravilloso!!! Para mí Tim Powers es un escritor de voz oscura, añeja y dorada como el mejor de los whiskys. En esta novela crea un mundo singular de mag ia y de realismo como si fuera un claroscuro, donde la magia es el elemento a vencer y el futuro el elemento al que no se puede e ngañar. Me ha encantado encantado pasear con Doyle por las calles de la Inglaterra de 1810 y sufrir con él, ver cómo su personaje personaje iba avanzando al mismo mi smo ritmo que la novela hasta crecer
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Sandy rated it it was amazing Sandy rated
Oct 19, 2011
Tim Powers' fourth novel, novel, 1983's "The Anubis Gates," is a book that I had been meaning to read for years. Chosen Chosen for inclusion in both both David Pringle's "Modern Fantasy: The Hundred Best Novels" and Jones & Newman's "Horror: 100 Best Books," as well as the recipient of the Philip K. Dick Memorial Award in i n 1984, the book came with plenty pl enty of good word of mouth, to say the least. And, as it turns out, all the ballyhoo back when was fully justified, as a s this really IS some some kind of superb work work.. As ...more 7 likes · likes ·
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Daniel (At ta ck of t he Books!) Daniel Books!) Burton Burton rated rated it Shelves: fantasy fantasy,, science-fiction science-fiction,, hugo
it was amazing
Oct 02, 2014
It’s been over thirty years since Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates was published, and the story of treachery, time travel, and long dead gods has aged well. But then, what should I have expected? It’s Tim Powers. As I think I saw someone else mention about the author, who else could combine Egyptia n mythology, Lord Byron, quantum mechanics, sorcererous clowns, clowns, and time t ime travel? It is at times dark, other times indulgent, and occasionally syrupy with fantasy. It is, at all times, ti mes, a complex mystery unfo...more unfo ...more 7 likes · likes ·
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Lisa Vegan rated Vegan rated it liked it Jun 01, 2009 Recommended to Lisa by: Otis Chandler Shelves: fiction fiction,, reviewed reviewed,, groups-buddies , speculative-fiction speculative-fiction,, historical-fiction historical-fiction,, novel
This book was exhausting to read. It has an extremely convoluted plot and I had to concentrate carefully to
avoid feeling confused. I couldn’t decide if I was loving it or irritated by it; I ended up feeling frustrated but found it fascinating too. I suppose it earns e arns 4 stars or even 5 for the author managing to put i t all together at the end, and that was quite a feat, but my experience of reading it was just that I liked it, nothing more. I think that too much happened and that t here was too much ...more 7 likes · likes ·
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Jim rated it did not like it Jim rated Shelves: 2fiction 2fiction,, fantasy fantasy,, did-not-finish did-not-finish,, 1paper
Jul 06, 2016
I gave it 100 pages & really didn't care about what was going on, so I quit. It could have been interesting, I think. The problem for me was I just didn't get any feeling for any of the characters or the situation. I wanted to, felt I should, but every time I picked up the book it was a chor choree & I found my mind wandering. 8 likes · likes ·
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Kim rated it Kim rated
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liked it
Jul 07, 2008
This was a tough one for me. I’d pick it up, read half a chapter, put it down for a few days, pick it back up --- rinse and repeat. Obviously, this isn’t my usual reading style. This took me about 170 pages pag es to really reall y sit back and g o ‘whoa’ ‘whoa’ (Joey Lawrence Style). Once I hit that mark, I was fine. I felt the story was entertaining. Clever, even. I particularly enjoyed the Coleridge and Byron characters. Eventually, I warmed up to the main protagonist, Brendan Doyle, even though I had a hard time t ...more
J rated it
May 27, 2008
really liked it
A friend loaned me this book book long long ago. It was his absolute absolute most favorite book book at the time. So I cracked the spine and moved right in. When I'm really into a book it becomes an extension of my left arm and tends to get ge t in the way of meals. When I finally returned it, full of crumbs and tea stains, the cover had somehow gone gone missing. My friend f riend was unhappy with me but I had thoroughly enjoyed his book. Thanks, Nathan. 6 likes · likes ·
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Stephen rated it really liked it Stephen rated Feb 25, 2010 Shelves: science-fiction science-fiction,, to-re-read to-re-read,, award-nominee-british-sf award-nominee-british-sf,, award-nominee-philipk-dick,, award-nominee-locus k-dick award-nominee-locus,, multiple-award-nominee , award-winner-philip-k-dick , locus-all-time-fantasy-poll, 1980-1989 1980-1989,, not-tolkien not-tolkien,, alternative-history alternative-history,, time-travel time-travel,, magical-realism
4.5 stars. Masterful story-telling. Highly Recommended. Nominee: British Science Fiction Fi ction Award for Best Novel (1986) Nominee: Locus Award for Best Fantasy Novel (1984) Winner: Philip Philip K. Dick Award for Best Novel Novel (1984) Voted onto Locus "All Time" Fantasy List (14th place) (1998) 6 likes · likes ·
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Daniel Polansky added Polansky added it
May 10, 2016
Right. I think I have to come to accept that I just like Declare a lot more than Tim Powers other books. books. That's not not really his fault, but here we are. Anubis A nubis Gates is not bad, Powers is enormously creative, and he has a good instinct for creating creating disturbing and horrific horrific imagery. i magery. Still though, like some of his other stuff, I can't help but feel that the set up is a lot stronger than the ending. Pretty much the entire last half of this is a series of fairly elaborate set-piece battles, and ...more
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Badb rated Badb rated it
· see review it was amazing
· review of another edition
Aug 06, 2015
Mira que me ha costado meterme en e n la trama por circunstancias externas, pero este libro li bro es, no sé ni cómo describirlo, una auténtica locura, un no parar, mezcla de ficción, viajes en el tiempo, personajes históricos,realidad. me ha encantado ...more 5 likes · likes ·
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Jenny (Read ing Envy) added Envy) added it Shelves: location-uk location-uk,, location-egypt location-egypt,, sci-fi-fantasy sci-fi-fantasy,, read2013
Sep 22, 2015
(I'll review this at a later date) ETA: I never reviewed it! Ah well. Discussed on Episode 039 of the Reading Envy podcast. 5 likes · likes ·
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sologdin rated it liked it sologdin rated Shelves: speculative
Feb 14, 2015
Nutshell: time machine, invented for the very practical purpose of attending a 19th century poetry reading, coincidentally dicks up several unrelated conspiracies conspir acies to t o take over the world. Egyptian deity types conscript a pack of gypsies in order to “purge Egypt of the Moslem and Christian taints” tai nts” (9). Apparently Egyptian sorcery is the engine of history, insofar as Trafalgar was caused by it (id.). Egyptians make copies of each other, “the animated duplicate, or ka” (13). Narrative revolves around ...more 4 likes · likes ·
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Shelves: fantasy fantasy,, reviewed reviewed,, historical-fiction historical-fiction,, awards awards,, classic-sff
Tim Powers wrote this historical time-travel fantasy in 1983 when it won the PKD award. If this sounds a bit strange, you've g ot to know know that Philip K. Dick and and Tim Powers were neighbor nei ghborss and good friends. But the novel is strange, anyways. It also appears in Gollancz' "Fantasy masterworks" as number 47. It involves 3 time planes: 1983 (the year of writing) where the travel starts; the main part plays pl ays in London's 1810 where some Egyptian mages t ry to bring back back magic and the worship worship of Egyptian go ...more 4 likes · likes ·
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Kristjan rated it liked it Kristjan rated Recommended to Kristjan by: GR Sci-Fi & Fantasy Book Club Shelves: historical-fantasy historical-fantasy,, book-club-selection book-club-selection,, reviewed
Dec 29, 2008
This book was billed as a classic 'Steam Punk' story that helped define the genre ... the only problem here was that the re was NO steam [tech:] and there was little or no punk either. In fact, the only way it fits here would be to credit the time period as Victorian (IMHO a useless expansion of the term), before mixing in a tremendous t remendous amount of magic in what should be more honestly billed as a time-travel fantasy. That said … it WAS a pretty decent time-travel story :) The story opens with a magi ...more 4 likes · likes ·
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· review of another edition Paul Perry rated Perry rated it really liked it Nov 02, 2014 Shelves: fantasy fantasy,, myth myth,, time-travel time-travel,, magic magic,, london london,, read-in-2014 read-in-2014,, male-author
4.5/5 Definitely one of the best time travel stories I have ever read, The Anubis
Gates mixes SF, magic, literary history, Egyptian mythology and hermetic magic into a tale that is superbly plotted and rollickingly told. Brendan Doyle, a literature lite rature professor and and expert on the obscure 19th century poet William Willi am Ashbless is recruited by reclusive mill ionaire J. Cochran Cochran Darrow Darrow for a secret project, which turns out to be a jaunt back to 1810 to see Samuel Taylor Coleridge give a lecture, where Doyle fi ...more 4 likes · likes ·
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