Three Against the World

I can't imagine readers making much sense of this book in isolation but once they have read the first volume most readers will surely be hooked. It is the good bits of that which keep you going here, and the creaky and confusing linking story about the Time Research experiment now begins to take on more life of its own. The four strands remain: the three time travellers and the Time Station. Fee's story is continued, as is Roller's (now a second generation Cimaroon). Tod has moved from the Spanish Civil War to the London of the eighteenth century. The Time Station section is much less confusing and possible links between all the stories can now be seen. This storytelling technique allows Leeson, and the reader, interesting variety, mixing time travel/science fiction with some very interesting (and all too rare, at this level) social and political comment. The decision to release the quartet, in this edition, at intervals is frustrating. Some readers might need help or encouragement to get started but then they will be self-propelled. (I wonder what Robert Leeson makes of the cover illustration which seems so inappropriate?)