From the Files of the Time Rangers

Reminiscent of the Company stories of Kage Baker (who provides a glowing foreword), the individual tales that make up Bowes's "mosaic" novel add up to a relatively coherent alternate history of Greek gods, men, heroes and cyborgs. Apollo, Bacchus and Pluto have been having their fun for millennia, but just up the Time Stream disaster looms, so they have recruited lost children to become "Time Rangers," humans able to surf the Time Stream at will and perhaps change history to the gods' advantage. Various stories loosely follow the lives of three rangers as they fall in love with gods and each other, produce offspring important to the future and return to life from the Gate of Sighs. Also featured are Pluto's two godsons, who can sense death, a useful skill when avoiding gay serial killers and uncovering murderers. While the gods themselves are mostly seen from afar, by novel's end oracles, Furies and fate have all come together in a grand Telling for humanity's future. The interwoven plot lines are sometimes hard to follow, but the diligent reader will uncover a worthwhile, fantastic world. Agent, Virginia Kidd . (Sept.)