Customer Reviews

The Shield of Time

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Even though the cover of Anderson's "Shield of Time" plainly states "A Novel of the Time Patrol," this is NOT a novel. It's a collection of 3 Time Patrol short stories (possibly novellas) loosely related only by their subject matter, main character(s), and some tacked on, tiny, inter-chapters. They're decently written short stories. But, an awful lot of the material is taken up with just describing the historical settings. I also was not very happy with the holes in the author's theory of time travel. But, overall, assuming you don't mind short stories instead of the advertised novel, I rate this at an OK 3 stars out of 5.

One of the best in Anderson's long running Time Patrol Series. In this work, Manse Everard rescues history on a grander scale than ever before Anderson attacks the sometimes tedious concept of temporal paradox in a manner that allows the reader to suspend disbelief and enjoy the rich interplay of his characters and the high adventure characteristic of all of Anderson's works.

Another Time Patrol novel with Everard Manse. A lot of this is taken up by a newer agent, a woman named Wanda Tamberley.

Manse is getting a bit worn down by the whole time policing thing, particularly given there is a faction with similar technology opposing them to their own ends.

Wanda herself gets a bit attached to those she is interacting with in 13000BC.

"The Shield of Time" is another novel in Poul Anderson's superb "Time Patrol" series. The premise is intriguing: Time travel is discovered in the far future, and history is changeable. Evolved humans from far uptime establish the Time Patrol to prevent time travellers from changing history and preventing the future humans from being created.

"The Shield of Time" is three novellas that are loosely linked, and the main protagonist is again Manse Everard, an Unattached agent of the Patrol ("Unattached" means that Everard can be assigned to projects in any era, rather than being a specialist in one particular time.)

These stories are all thought-provoking, and as usual take advantage of author Anderson's broad understanding of human history. I found the middle story to be somewhat tedious, and to be honest about it, Wanda Tamberly did not strike me as Time Patrol material, unless the Patrol selects its agents for looks instead of brains. This quibble aside, this is a fine collection of novellas that fans of the Time Patrol series will greatly enjoy.

Poul Anderson was a giant of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. As I have noted elsewhere, Anderson died in 2001 and already his body of work is becoming difficult to find. I hope and trust that future republishings will make his work available to future readers.

Though it's billed as Anderson's first novel-length story about the Time Patrol, it's really three novellas strung together. First, agent Manse Everard is in Bactria (today's Afghanistan) in 209 BCE, fight a group called the Exaltationists who are constantly seeking to overthrow the established timeline and establish an alternate history in which they are worshipped as gods, or failing that, to let chaos loose on the universe. Next there's a long sojourn in the Pleistocene, when new Time Patrol recruit Wanda Tamberley is letting her emotions get the better of her judgment in dealing with competing tribes. Finally there's a brisk romp through medieval Europe, restoring the timeline after it has been disrupted by a random event. This was my favorite part of the book. The second part lacked excitement and tended to drag. The first part was good but I really wanted to know more. Where did the Exaltationists come from? How did they come so close to disrupting time in Columbia and Peru? How did a conquistador seize a timecycle, figure out how to use it, and go forward to 1989 California and kidnap Wanda Tamberley? I would really have liked to read these stories but all this action is over before the book even starts. Maybe it is described in some of Anderson's previous Time Patrol stories.

Anyway, the book is enjoyable on the whole if you can get over the sometimes tedious middle part.

Unattached Agent Manse Everard has to be the most complex man,part spy for the Time Patrol, and part deep thinker. His struggles on the part of the Patrol to preserve history are an interesting moral and ethical quandry to read. Should agents of the Patrol be allowed to have personal lives ? And what quandries will face them if they do, as Everard falls in love with a field specialist named Wanda Tamberly. Or should he give up all hope of ever again trying to have at least a normal life. One would think that time travel does secretly exist some where, Mr Anderson's writing is so factual and extraordinary.

This was my first Poul Anderson book to read, and I picked it up because my 3-year-old liked the mastadon on the cover. An excellent book dealing with imaginative and purposeful time travel. The storyline is so engrossing and convincingly well-written that this reader felt as if i were living the histories described. This is the job I want if I ever grow up

from the back cover of the July 1991 TOR paperback edition

Manse Everard is a man with a mission. As an Unattached Agent of the Time Patrol, he's to go anyplace - and anytime? - where humanity's transcendent future is threatened by the alteration of the past. This is Manse's profession, and his burden; for how much suffering, throughout human history, can he bear to "preserve"?

Wanda Tamberley is a Patrol member in search of her mission. Recruited fro sunny California in the late 20th century, she'd rather serve as a scientist in the research branch, exploring Earth's flora and fauna in epochs long past. But as hints accumulate from the Patrol's mysterious leaders uptime, it's beginning to look as if a lot of human history depends on her personal decisions - and Manse's.

Meanwhile, the Exaltationists are on the loose, determined to revise human history and rule Time forever ... and Manse Everard is sworn to stop them, no matter what the heartbreaking cost!

I originally read the 1950s 'Time Patrol' stories written by Poul Anderson about 30 years ago, and loved them.
So when I discovered a the sequel 'The Shield of Time', I was delighted and couldn't wait to read it.
I'm sorry to say I must agree with other reviewers in that I found it quite tedious. The pace and action of the 1950s stories was replaced mainly with boring historical trivia.
The book is in three main sections.
The first section dragged along to an obvious and unexciting conclusion.
The middle section based in pre-historic earth was simply irrelevent, and the third and final section was a re-hash of a previously told 1950s story in which the present world has been changed out of all recognition by a change to history that took place centuries before.
At least in the 1950s version of this story the change was entertaining and made sense, in this version it 'just happened', and having happened the story plodded along with no action until the very last pages.
I can only assume that the author was paid by the word for this book, since there were so many of them. Sad to say, I personally was most disappointed.