Long before finishing Kage Baker's THE LIFE OF THE WORLD TO COME, I
experienced an irresistible urge to look up "picaresque hero" in my
old English lit crit textbook. (So there is a reason why we
keep these things!)
And what I found confirmed a not-too-bad memory of what we're
dealing with in this rollicking book about time travel gone
slightly wonky. Baker's endearing child-genius, Alec Checkerfield,
does indeed grow up to be everything the picaresque or anti-hero
was meant to be. He's a drifter, an outsider, a risk-taker, a
he