Ned Henry is a time traveler who has been tasked with finding out whether an item known as the bishop’s bird stump was in Coventry Cathedral when it was bombed during WW2. He comes down with a case of time-lag due to too much time travel and is sent to the Victorian era to rest. However, the Victorian era isn’t as restful as he had hoped because a missing cat might cause time itself to unravel.

A solid collection with fleshed-out characters and good world building. Most of the stories left me wanting more including the dream-like opener, “In the Distance, A Familiar Sound” in which a drug-using artist in Germany obsessed with consciousness and time meets a figure of chaos. We get another artist in “The Flesh Winks while the Ghost Weeps” who is forced to do a portrait of a cult leader.