Emperor

Stephen Baxter returns with a new–and surprising–series, called Time's Tapestry. In the first book of the series, Baxter chronicles the rise and fall of the Roman Empire in Britain. Time's Tapestry is positioned as an alternate history epic.

In Emperor, readers are introduced to the Prophecy of Nectovelin, which is central to the entire series. Broken into several parts, Emperor follows the descendents of Nectovelin through history, beginning with the second Roman invasion of Britain, and chronicles the family's use of the Prophecy for personal gain, and family wealth.

The first obvious difference between Emperor, and Baxter's typical work is the lack of space. Outer space is a staple in Baxter's fiction, but barely surfaces in this book, except for a couple of off-handed references by the characters in the novel.

Stephen Baxter does an excellent job however, of bringing the ancient majesty of the Roman Empire to life, and richly details the novel with descriptions of daily life, and of the replacement of the British culture with the overwhelming Roman style.

One way Baxter sets this saga apart from his typical fare is to even change the style of the text, the formatting, and print-style. Quotations use only a single mark, rather than the ordinary two. There are no headers, with Baxter's name, or the title of the book, and the chapters are very simply numbered in Roman numerals.

Though extremely different from his standard works, Baxter hints at things to come, and it's easy to see how Time's Tapestry could become embedded heavily into Baxter's infinite vision of time and space. Other books, such as Coalescent, now make a lot more sense, and can be seen as building-blocks toward this series.

Emperor succeeds as a whole, and keeps the reader engaged and interested throughout, very well. The only complaint could be the abruptness with which the novel ends, seemingly too soon. Certainly the ending is appropriate, but a “to be continued” would have been nice, and not unwarranted. Nevertheless, Emperor is an excellent novel, and a promising start to the new series.