Message-ID: <12436@sri-arpa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 27-Sep-84 19:55:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.12436
Posted: Thu Sep 27 19:55:48 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 30-Sep-84 04:09:55 EDT
Lines: 29

From:  Marshall Rose 

The second of the series focuses on Chronos, the incarnation who controls
time.  Time is around to ensure that "cause and effect" works.  To do
this, Chronos, like Merlin, lives his life backwards, so it's "effect and
cause" to him.  Hence, the person who assumes the office of time leaves
office when he's born which is before (after) he took the office later
(earlier) in life.  Needless to say, this gives Chronos a lot of advantages
towards the end (beginning) of his term.  Unfortunately, Chronos is most
vulnerable that the beginning (end) of this term, when he knows virtually
nothing and all the other incarnations know everything that already happened.
Needless to say, the Father of Lies, takes subtle advantage of this
several times to win his dominion over creation.

The book is a *lot* of fun.  Anthony spends a lot of time discussing
the paradoxes that can happen when Time (and others Time designates)
move about in time (with his hourglass, Time can do all kinds of nifty
temporal hocus-pocus).  There's also a lot of humorous shenanigan's that
Chronos gets himself into when learning about the hourglass.  A few scenes were so funny I had to put the book down until I could stop giggling.

I have one complaint about the book and one about the series:
for the book, some of the constraints placed on the use of the hourglass seem
to be artificial (i.e., inserted only to prevent the protagonist from easily
working things out).  Perhaps not.  for the series: you'd think that the
incarnations would have a manual telling them all about their new powers and
so on.  It'd save a lot of times and mistakes (and make the Father of Lies'
job a lot harder).

/mtr