VESTIGES OF TIME

This further chapter in the career of ""paratime""-hopper Eric Mathers should be read in conjunction with No Brother, No Friend (1976). Once more Mathers ""scuds"" across parallel time-lines, this time into the hands of a revolutionary group who want to clone a whole private army out of him. When rebel HQ is wiped out, the stranded Mathers finds himself in startling mental ""resonance"" with the 366 almost-completed clones, the whole functioning as a powerful disembodied intelligence. This new entity leaps across times and spaces on the trail of Mathers' old enemies the Kriths, the race of paratime-scudding tyrants who almost got him in the last book. The current one is written with more control and sophistication than its predecessor, but put together with much badly managed recapitulation of earlier events. Still, there's any amount of room for sequels; one day Meredith may get a really rousing book out of this material.