This is the immediate sequel to Island in the Sea of Time. In the previous book, the island of Nantucket and its inhabitants are inexplicably transported to (IIRC) 1242 B.C–the bronze age. There’s the usual material about survival and gearing down technology to a sustainable level, and interactions with the people of the era. In this book, renegade William Walker sells his services to King Agamemnon of Mycenae (yes, that Agamemnon) and with the help of Odikweos, King of Ithaka, sets himself up as a tech-wizard and power in the land. Meanwhile the Nantucketers are preparing to oppose him, in particular by making an alliance with the people of Babylon.

It’s the usual intriguing blend of anachronistic technology, alternate history, and military situations that I’ve come to expect from Stirling. I have the same issues with this book that I had with its predecessor, unsurprisingly, so I won’t go into that again.

The stand-out part of this book (other than a few sequences where Stirling is clearly channelling Patrick O’Brian–Desolation Island comes especially to mind) is Walker’s experiences in Mycenae. The blend of intelligence, practicality, good management, ruthlessness, lust for power, and casual amorality with which Walker rises to power among the Achaeans is truly disturbing. The most unsettling bits show Walker disciplining his children in a very normal and fatherly way–except that the life lessons he’s imparting are all unpleasantly twisted toward treating your fellow men like cattle: not to be casually abused, nor to be sentimentalized either, but to be treated as the source of wealth and a valuable resource. There are a few grisly scenes of torture carried out by Walker’s psychopathic wife Alice Hong, the “Lady of Pain”, which I could have done without; but frankly, the scenes with Walker’s kids were more chilling.

The book does have one flaw that I’ll mention, a flaw that it shares with many (most?) other books in the genre: the course of true love too often runs smooth. If the plot throws a man and a woman together, you can be pretty sure that they are going to pair off for the long term. It happens to at least four couples in this book, and perhaps more than that in the previous book. It’s nice to have couples pairing off, but when it begins to seem inevitable that’s a problem. I can’t beat up Stirling too much over this, though, because as I say everybody does it.

I wouldn’t say that these are my favorites of stirling’s books, but they are good, solid reads nevertheless, especially if you have a taste for (alternate) history.