Description:

From Publishers Weekly

Earth in the 25th century has been resettled by its space colonies after the 2091-2093 Time of Troubles nearly devastated humanity's home planet in Cowdrey's dark SF debut. From Ulanor, "the capital of the human race," Colonel Yamashita's fearsome KGB-style Security Service controls hundreds of inhabited worlds in an effort to prevent such a disaster from happening again—even if it means liquidating most of the population. When "some idiots at the University" in Ulanor build a wormhole generator called "the Crux," a subversive gaggle of Old Believers, do-gooders and other agitators use it to send an agent back in time to block events that ignited the Time of Troubles. With four attempts to change the past by dizzyingly shifting combinations of conspirators, the narration becomes chronologically dyspeptic. Characters melt frenetically from "good" to "bad" and back again, and even Cowdrey's flattish protagonist, Hastings Maks, loses definition. Cowdrey evidently intended Alspeke, a mishmash of Earth's old tongues and now humanity's common language, to give an exotic as well as Orwellian flavor, but its heavy Russian component necessitates momentum-damping translations. A few tragi-ludicrous sexual situations, like the all-powerful near-mummified Controller Xian's lust for young men, help lighten the novel's otherwise oppressive atmosphere.
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From Booklist

In the future history of Earth, the Time of Troubles is a catastrophic twenty-first-century world war that annihilates 12 billion people and leaves a fragment of survivors to preserve the human race. Centuries later, with humanity enjoying a golden age of galactic colonization, a wormhole generator is invented, allowing time travel into the remote past. Hoping to undo history's worst massacre, a band of radical humanitarians known as the Crux infiltrates the wormhole to assassinate the Russian leader who launched the Time of Troubles. In response, a brigade of timesurfers forms to make forays into the past and track down scofflaws. In succeeding episodes, the story follows the career of timesurfer Hastings Maks, who endures kidnappings, torture, and double-crosses to safeguard his native time line from past-altering terrorists. Retired military historian Cowdrey has expanded an acclaimed short story into his debut novel in the sf genre. While little new ground is broken in the time-travel department, a cast of well-fleshed characters and electrifying action should gain Cowdrey a satisfied audience. Carl Hays
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