Thieves Of Time

I suggested The Gods Of Time as an appropriate title for a collection of the two long Time Patrol stories about Northern European mythology. A similarly appropriate title for a collection of Exaltationist stories would be The Thieves Of Time. Thieves... could be just "The Year Of The Ransom" and "Ivory, And Apes, And Peacocks" or these two plus Parts One and Two of The Shield Of Time.

In the latter case, the rest of The Shield Of Time plus "Death And The Knight" could be repackaged as Time Patrolwoman because of the increasing importance of Wanda Tamberly in this latter part of the series.

Before Gods, Thieves and Patrolwoman, there is only the original Guardians Of Time, which grew from four to five stories.

Guardians... culminates with the restoration of the Danellian timeline when the Patrol counteracts Neldorian intervention in the Second Punic War;

Gods... culminates when Everard and Floris end their relationship;

Thieves... (longer version) culminates with the arrest of the last Exaltationists;

Patrolwoman culminates with the restoration of the Danellian timeline when the Patrol counteracts chaos; also when Everard and Tamberly begin their relationship.

Obviously more happens than this! - but these are important events in the careers and lives of the characters.

I think that "Gibraltar Falls," the later Guardians... story, should be included at the end, not in the middle, of the volume. By highlighting the differences in age and dates of recruitment of Everard and Nomura, the story metafictitiously reflects the considerable lapse of time between the dates of writing and publication of the original tetralogy and this later addition to the series - which, fortunately, was not the last.