The Time Patrol Series

Poul Anderson, Time Patrol (New York, 2006).

Poul Anderson's Time Patrol series has to be unique. Alone among sf series, it covers:

both time travel paradoxes - circular causality and causality violation;
(brief) references to future ages and extraterrestrial colonies;
the power and content of myths;
tribal dynasties and conflicts;
the transition from barbarism to civilization, and sometimes the reverse;
the course of history and many of its potential turning points;
a sense of times past and of innocence lost;
an understanding of pre-technological, seasonal time -

"Equinox brought melting ice, bud, blossom, and leaf." (p. 427)

- and, in another time and place, the north wind smells of sea, swamp and snow! (p. 601)

I expect to finish rereading "The Sorrow of Odin the Goth", then to embark on (what I call) the Exaltationist trilogy. However, when I have completed sixty posts on this blog for February, I may well take a break from Anderson to read, for the first time, Ian M Banks' third Culture novel.