Subject: Resubmitted Review -- Thebes of the Hundred Gates

From: [email-masked] (Michael Paddon)
Date: 2 Apr 92 04:20:53 GMT

_Thebes of the Hundred Gates_ is the story of Edward Davis, a operative
for the 22nd century Time Service. This organisation is only incidentally
sketched during the narrative, but its primary purpose is to drop
scientific observers for first hand research in interesting eras of
history.

Davis is landed in 18th Dynasty Thebes (around 1300 B.C.). His mission
is a little out of the ordinary, despite the fact that he is a trained
egyptologist. Along with tourism of the distant and hard to reach past,
he also is charged with rescuing two other Time Service operatives.

Sandberg and Lehman, the stranded operatives, intended to visit Rome
around the time of Christ. A technical problem of some sort, however,
saw them overshoot both time and place by a large margin. Although
only 18 months has gone by up the line, the rescue mission arrives
in Thebes 15 years after their own time drop due to unavoidable
inaccuracies of the Service's probabilistic tracking.

Of course, what should have be a simple rescue ends up being
far more complex than originally evisaged...

_Thebes of the Hundred Gates_ doesn't have any grand message to deliver
or any high philosophy to espouse. It is well written and entertaining;
Silverberg should be applauded for writing with discipline in an age
when stories with less content are published as trilogical tree killers.

The major weakness I noticed was patchy research -- isolated facets of life
in ancient Thebes are minutely described (ie. embalming processes) whilst
other details are scant. Compared with, say, Wolfe's _Soldier of the Mist_
this work certainly suffers. To be fair, Silverberg did not have historical
verismilitude as his prime goal, but rather to entertain for short while.
In this, he has succeeded admirably.

                                     Michael

%A Silverberg, Robert
%T Thebes of the Hundred Gates
%I Axolotl Press, Pulphouse Publishing
%C Eugene, OR, USA
%D 1991
%G ISBN unknown
%P 110 pp.
%O trade paperback, perfect bound

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  IIIII    IIIII    Michael Paddon
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