The conclusion to the 'Time's tapestry' series brings the story all the way forward from the medieval world to the 20th century - and we are given the reveal almost straight away. We meet the Weaver, and find out how he has been manipulating time - but not why. For it is 1940, and his work has attracted the attention of Nazi occultists and racial purity elements in the SS: and they have their own ideas about the manipulation of history.

We are plunged into an alternate history almost immediately, with a successful German invasion of the south-east of England. The story then unfolds, with continual resonances to the previous books in the series; this volume reverts to the pattern of revisiting the scenes of earlier historical events. The characters are centred on the south coast town of Hastings, where William the Bastard landed in 1066. Throughout the book, the characterisation is back to the level of the first two volumes. We have a plot that moves ahead perfectly well; we have a vivid picture of Britain under the Nazis; and we have turns of events that seem well attuned to the way things pan out in the real world - that is, not all ideas turn out to be good ones and some events don't work out as planned.

In the end, there is a conclusion. Baxter does not adopt the "many worlds" theory of causality (though it is discussed); the ending closes the whole sequence neatly.

Dreadful sub-editing by Gollancz: umlauts are omitted on many of the German words and names, and it's not as if they weren't available in the printer's character set, as they are present in the name 'Gödel'; omitting them in the word 'Führer' is tantamount to illiteracy. It's not an uncommon word, after all. And the word "studebaker" is not capitalised, making it look like a generic nickname for any American light truck, whereas it is, of course, a proper noun. ( )

This was the best and last of the Time's Tapestry series. Better characters, a more engaging and less disjointed storyline, a consistent resolution. At last the complications and contradictions of the prophesies in the previous 3 books can be understood. Even the confusion and incoherence of the third book in the series is explained here - explained, but not rescued.
Towards the end of Weaver, I began to wonder if the author was trying to follow in the footsteps of Neal Stephenson and the Cryptonomicon arc. If so, Baxter should have played to his strengths, and thrown in a bit more maths and science.

Baxter brings his series to a very satisfying conclusion. Not only do we see the parties who have been trying to manipulate history since 4 BC but, unlike earlier books, we actually get an overt alternate history.

Some of those parties turn out to by Rory O'Malley and Ben Kamen, two physics students in this world's Boston of 1940. Using Kurt Godel's mathematical explications of Einstein's Theory of Relativity and J. W. Dunne's theory of time, O'Malley is trying to alter history. But others want to manipulate the past too. Some are only known by their fingerprints on history, but others are onstage, specifically one Josef Trojan, officer in the Nazi research organization the SS Ahnenerbe, and Julia Fiveash, an English Nazi.

Fiveash is an example of the strong women, for good and ill, that are throughout this series Another is Mary Wooler, an American journalist and historian trapped in England when the Nazis invade in 1940. She and her son Gary meet Kamen there on the eve of the invasion. Kamen is captured by the Germans, and Wooler and a British Intelligence officer began to suspect the extant of the Nazi plans to alter the world's past.

That invasion is possible because, unlike in our time, the Germans wiped out most of the British Expeditionary Force at Dunkirk, but the timeline of this story seems to have diverged from ours at least as far back as the end of World War One though Baxter never explains why Armistice Day is Nov 9th and not Nov. 11th in this world. The invasion doesn't occupy all England - and Baxter presents a clever reason why - but the effects on those under the Nazi boot are well depicted through the life of Ernst Trjoan, the "good" German soldier who is Josef's brother, and Gary Wooler. Ernst's relations with his French mistress and the Millers, the English family he billets with, show the compromises, resentments, violence, and surprising affection that can crop up between conquered and conqueror.

And Baxter ends his story with a surprise entirely consistent with the series. ( )

Author is impressive in his ability to interweave his knowledge of technology in his story. I thoroughly enjoyed the storyline, makes you proud that the US entered the war when it did! I like all of Baxter's altered history books. ( )

I enjoyed this book the best of Baxter's Time's Tapestry Series. Much of the plot explained the actions and inter-actions of the previous books. I thought it was well researched, cleaver and had a satisfied ending. ( )