Several friends recommended books by [a:Tim Powers|8835|Tim Powers|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png], saying that his books were of a similar genre to those of [a:Charles Williams|36289|Charles Williams|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1217390107p2/36289.jpg]. This is the second one I've read, and I was rather disappointed. This

I found it a bit too messy. The plot is complex, and sometimes saying a book has a complex plot is a recommendation. [b:Foucault's Pendulum|17841|Foucault’s Pendulum|Umberto Eco|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1396645125l/17841.SY75.jpg|11221066] by [a:Umberto Eco|1730|Umberto Eco|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1588941738p2/1730.jpg] has a complex plot, and has many similar elements, but it is the kind of complexity that makes one want to read it again to unravel it. This one made me want to say to the author, "just get on with the story". In [b:The Annubis Gates|132137368|THE ANNUBIS GATES (PAPERBACK)|Tim Powers|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1697834916l/132137368.SX50.jpg|2193115] you start reading one story, and then you find you're in a different one, with no apparent connection with the first one.

It begins with Brendan Doyle an American student of literature, being asked to go on a time travel trip with a group of wealth dilettantes to hear a lecture given by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in 1810. Doyle is interested in a minor poet, William Ashbless, who was said to have been present at the lecture, and is persuaded to join the expedition in the hope of meeting Ashbless, but when the expedition returns to the 20th century (1984) Doyle is somehow left behind, and has little option but to become a beggar, and soon finds that begging is an industry controlled by a few, and you have to join one of the begging cartels to survive.

That on its own has the seeds of quite a complex plot, but numerous disparate elements are added, which are difficult to follow, because of Powers's habit, noted in another of his books that I have read, of suddenly switching from one scene to another without giving any clue to the reader that he has done so, until you are two or three paragraphs into the new scene, and then have to go back and reread the paragraph after making a mental adjustment to fit it to the new setting and characters. But in the second reading one tends to.... (text disappeared, can't be arsed to type it again now, will maybe edit it later)