I think that this volume suffered from having the theme defined too strictly. Most of the stories had, basically, the same plot. There is a wise committee of elders who take on responsibility for protecting the time line. They send time travellers back in time to fix what they regard as an anomaly. The time traveller is the hero. There are then variations as to how successful or otherwise the hero is and, of course, the details of each mission do vary widely.

I really enjoyed the first story but then after reading on I felt that they were all a bit too similar and I found myself putting the book down for a long while. When I picked it up again I enjoyed reading a few more stories then the ennui set in again causing another hiatus.

Overall I thought that most of the stories were really good. Taken individually they were enjoyable and interesting. Maybe reading one story in between reading other books would be the right approach for this. ( )

[Disclaimer: I got this book via LibraryThing's Early Reviewer program]
The Guardians of Time are a group of people who are able to travel back in time to modify the past in order to have a better world. This book contains a number of short stories, all starting with this setup, but without a consistent plot: this means that you should not search for coherence between stories, but just enjoy the single ones. Actually I found the level of the stories very unequal: especially the first ones would have profited from a heavy editing. This said, there are some stories which are rather good: "Temporal Agent Walker" by Owen Morgan, which shows how it could be difficult to put thinks back again in place; "The Day That Wasn’t" by Taylor Roth, with an unexpected plot twist; and "The Xenobot Paradox" by Lyle Stiles, which adds artificial beings to the common plot. I would also have appreciated "Training Days" by Bob Price, which seems to be the first part of a longer book, but even if it has a lot of interesting ideas it is a bit too patronizing, like what Clarke wrote in the 50s. ( )

A definite mixed bag! Some very good stories, with others confusing and difficult to follow. It would be interesting to see some of the stories fleshed out into novels or novellas in their own right. ( )

Anthologies don’t usually put their best stories first. As I began to read the first story in Guardians of Time, Leap of Faith by Wendy Steele, I thought that I might have found the exception. That was confirmed as I continued reading. I liked all the stories in this short story time-travel collection. Each story is a little over an hour read and leaves you feeling good. The only exception was the last story in the book, Training Days by Bob Price. While starting to be a good read, it seemed to end prematurely. Perhaps, its original intent was as an intro to a book.

I wouldn’t mind ready another short story collection by this literary compiler, Zimbell House Anthology. ( )

I have received many short story collections through early reviewers and in general the standard is reasonable. This is no exception. The stories all took the "guidelines" and went in different directions - which I quite enjoyed. Good for a quite weekend or across some commutes to work ( )