Gollancz, 2008, 321 p.

Unlike the previous volumes in Baxter’s “Time’s Tapestry” series which were spread over several centuries and as a result had a disjointed feel, the action in this one is spread over only a few years in the late 1930s and early 1940s. The tale is tighter and more cohesive as a consequence.

The prologue features an Irishman called O’Malley who at MIT has invented a machine he calls a “loom” with which – with the contribution of the dreams of an Austrian Jew called Ben Kamen – he has managed to send a message back to pre-Roman Britain. It isn’t long before both the loom and Kamen have been snatched by the Nazis and incorporated into their greater plan of altering history to ensure the triumph of the Reich.

The meat of the book is set in and after the invasion of Southern England by German forces once the BEF had been destroyed on the shore at Dunkirk. A hasty (and to my mind unlikely) deal by Churchill with the US sees them given military bases – US sovereign territory – south of London. As Hitler is seeking to avoid war with the US the German advance halts when they encounter these. This struck me as more of a sop to possible US readers of the book than something that would have occurred in such a scenario. The presence of a female US newspaper correspondent and her son in the cast of characters also points in this direction. A demarcation line cutting off South-East England is where the war situation settles down.

Off-stage Churchill falls as Prime Minister, to be succeeded by Lord Halifax who nevertheless continues the war – which goes on more or less as in our timeline; Barbarossa, Pearl Harbor, Stalingrad, El Alamein all get a mention, Japan’s invasion of Australia is new though. Again it may be more likely that Halifax would have sued for peace, but perhaps that would have been unthinkable with a substantial part of the UK – not just the Channel Islands – under German rule.

While Weaver can be read as a one-off with no detriment to the reading experience there are several nice touches where Baxter has his characters travel to locations which appeared in earlier books in the series; places like Birdoswald on Hadrian’s Wall and Richborough in Kent (Roman Rutupiae.)

This is the sort of thing that Harry Turtledove essays so frequently. Baxter’s characters are more rounded than Turtledove’s generally are and the extra twist of the loom makes for an added commentary on the contingency of historical events.

Time’s Tapestry Book 3.

Navigator is set between the years 1066 and 1492, with some scenes in England and the Jerusalem of the Crusader Outremer but the action occurs mostly in al-Andalus, the region of Spain then still ruled by the Moors. This book spans the gradual and piecemeal destruction of Islamic Western Europe. (Baxter notes the harshness and crudities of its replacement.) This necessarily highlights the contest between the Christian West and Islam which at the book’s start has been going on for 500 years, to its inhabitants seems unending, and is of obvious relevance today. Baxter carefully reminds us that it was the Muslim Arabs who preserved (and extended) the knowledge of Greece and Rome and manages to throw in a list of English words – still in use today – that are derived from Arabic.

The disruptions of history involved in this volume of Baxter’s “Time’s Tapestry” series are various. One is an interpolation from a future where the Muslim army was not defeated by the Franks at Poitiers and they went on to rule all Europe. Another is the development of war machines known as the Engines of God and a new agent of destruction which a parchment calls Incendium Dei, and turns out to be gunpowder. The main thrust of the prophecies in which the two families the story follows are entwined is the contest between looking west and Columbus’s voyages to the Americas or to turn east to combat the remaining forces of Islam.

The three main sections of the book – set in the years 1085, 1242-1248 and 1472-1491 respectively – have stories which, though they are connected loosely, do not really overlap which can make the reading a disjointed experience as it is not always the case that they occur at natural times to lay the book down.

The attractions of tales such as these lie in seeing what changes, if any, to our history are unfolded and what historical people pop up perhaps unexpectedly. (Roger Bacon in this instance.) A lot of history – arguably mostly all but forgotten in the West, except in Spain – is run through here, relatively painlessly, though occasionally the necessity for characters to talk about events holds back the action. The nature of the Weaver of Time, or his/her (I feel almost sure it will turn out to be his) possible adversary, the Witness, has still not been revealed. But there is always Volume 4; which, given the 500 year or so time span each volume of Time’s Tapestry encompasses, will take us up to the present, or nearly.