Amazon.co.uk: Who Needs Cleopatra?: Steve Redwood: Books

Product Description

Interzone Magazine Issue 200, October 2005
intriguing time riddles... research seems impeccable... Redwood's prose is a delight... wit and irreverence shine through... ...an irresistible combination

Sci-fi Online Reviews
enough twists and turns to please the most demanding time travel fan... the novel as a whole is really funny

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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

Witty and Unusual read, 3 Jun 2005

By	John George (Hereford, England) - See all my reviews

A refreshingly original series of humorous time travel capers (at first seemingly unrelated) which throw surprising and sometimes shocking 'light' on certain historical events. but also maintain an intersecting thread set in the present with three (or four) extremely menacing Women In Black come from the future to interrogate the terrified narrator. Maybe better not to peer too closely into the workings of the 'science' (the Egg-Timer Effect'?), but the weird logic which holds the whole book together is as far as I can follow it entirely self-consistent as well as unexpected, as are the historical 'revelations'. The currently fashionable Leonardo da Vinci plays a key role, though more Cod than Code. Paticularly liked the development of the relations between the Women in Black, though best of all perhaps is the 'voice' of the narrator, a bounder of the old school if ever there was one. Touch of the Flashmans there, which must be good.

Not much here of the strong emotional elements that marked Steve Redwood's first novel 'Fisher of Devils', but the humour here is more mature, probably funnier, and the novel as a whole more cunningly constructed. Even the title doesn't make sense before the final line of the whole thing. Not Pratchett, no (only Pratchett is Pratchett), but a more intelligent and genuinely witty read than, say, Rankin or Andy Secombe, IMHO.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

The rise of the Redwood, 13 Sep 2005

By	Neil Ayres - See all my reviews

Steve Redwood's new book is an upward growth from his emotional, funny and--in the US at least--controversial debut, Fisher of Devils.

Who Needs Cleopatra? introduces an instantly likeable but totally amoral narrator, an overdose of Redwood's infectious humour, some laugh-out-loud asides on sexual politics and, ultimately, rounds it all off with an upbeat end