Tides of Time follows the lives of Gene and Stacy. There are twelve twenty page chapters. Each chapter is an episode on a tiny island in the Mediterranean, near Greece. There is a slight continuity of the main characters, but the setting keeps going further back in time. The first one is kind of present day, there is a WWII chapter, and so on. At the end of each chapter is a page or two describing a person, maybe like the moral at the end of a parable.

The last chapter kind of explains things, trying to bring the story together. Then there is Gene's explanation of the entire experience, which might make some sort of sense, but it's kind of obscure. The ending did make up for a lot of the disjointedness of going from episode to episode.

The scholars probably love this kind of book, but I like my stories a bit more coherent. It certainly wasn't bad, but within my collection, I'm sure there are hundreds that I'd appreciate more. Probably a dozen of those are by Brunner himself. My recommendation is, if it's in your collection go ahead and read it, but it's not one you need to go out and get.