1987 SF, seventh of its series. With a parallel timeline thought to be
causing disruptions, the Time Commandos are sent to join Jason in his
voyage to retake the Golden Fleece.
Nobody really knows what they're doing here, but when they
capture someone who is biologically a centaur and genuinely believes
himself to be Chiron, well, what else can you do but go and poke the
situation with a stick? Until about the three-quarter mark this book
is mostly infodumping Greek myth, combined with a feet-of-clay version
of "how it might really have happened", and our heroes are in the dark
as to whether they should be disrupting the voyage, murdering Jason,
or making sure he succeeds.
Which is nothing special, but quite enjoyable, so it's a bit of a
wrench when we find out what's really going on, and the remainder is
mostly action, with some implausible technology brought into the
service of making the myths happen more or less as they were told.
Ish.
It's very slight plotting, even more so than the other books, which
doesn't always mesh well with the grim manly action down at ground
level. Indeed, the series has given up any pretensions to be a serious
story about time travel; the "fugue sequence" described here is a
different technique from the one in The Ivanhoe Gambit, and much
inferior; but as an excuse for taking the characters for a brief romp
through the Argonautica while remaining at least nominally an SF
series it pretty much works.
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