I've always liked this one, apart from one silly moment at the end - the psychological drama is resolved when two male characters decide to trust each other because they attended the same Cambridge college, several centuries apart. I hereby give notice that if the Right Honorable Peter Lilley MP, let alone some time-travelling avatar of Lord Cornwallis, both of whom are fellow Clare graduates, should ever try this on me they will get a rude response.
Apart from that, I love the setting - an enclosed space beyond space and time, a rest station in the ongoing Change Wars between Snakes and Spiders, two time-travelling factions changing the history of Earth (and, we understand, of many other worlds) for thei own ends, with little regard to the human and other lives that are put at stake. The story is rather theatrical in presentation, and one can easily imagine it being put on stage. Not as mature as his other Hugo-winning novel, The Wanderer, and with as I said a somewhat silly ending, but very entertaining all the same.
