What if you could travel through time? If you could change the past? What if the change could jeopardise the very future you inhabit? Would you try anyway if it was important enough to you, despite the risks? And if the very technology you are using is coveted by people with less noble aims, would it make a difference?

Time travel is always risky, and never more so when coupled with inter-galactic warfare. In order to escape a war zone, Delgado and Ash take to an uncertain future, and end up in an even more dangerous situation. The Sinz, a race that has humanoid, amphibious and avian forms, has invaded Seriatt, and set up a shield to protect them while they wait for reinforcements. The Seriatts have been almost wiped out, but Delgado and Ash team up with a guerrilla group fighting the Sinz.

Structure's chief, General William Myson, has dispatched his best operative, Colonel Viktor Saskov, along with a Seriatt, to destroy the seat of the Sinz power and to recover the time gate, and Myson's half-Seriatt son, Michael. Saskov doesn't need the complications that Delgado and Ash represent, and Delgado certainly isn't going to trust a Structure operative any more than is absolutely necessary. Certainly not given the association with Myson and the fact that Michael is Delgado's son, not Myson's.

This is an ambitious novel and manages to weave the time travel element, with all its paradoxes and uncertainties, into the story with distinct flair. Couple this with the action of the resistance fighting against their occupiers, and the intrigue on both the Sinz and Structure side, and you have a compelling drama. There is even an inter-species sex scene or two in case things get a little tame for the reader.

At first the switching back between the present and the past is a bit distracting until you get used to noting the dates in the scene headings, but once you get past that the story unfolds at a fast pace, with disparate threads coming together in a thundering climax. While this is Martin Sketchley's third novel, I have no doubt he will become a fixture in modern SF.