Together with various fictional characters, the story also involves Plato, and of course Socrates - who only comes onstage in the last part - as well as the 19th Century publisher William Henry Appleton.

This theme is taken up in a sequel, Unburning Alexandria, of which the first two chapters were published as a standalone novelette in the November 2008 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

[4][5] Publishers Weekly found it "light (and) engaging", but warned that because of the constant use of time travel, "the plot threatens to fracture".

[6] In Strange Horizons, Colin Harvey praised it as "delightfully old-fashioned", with a "cool, spare style" which he compared to that of Isaac Asimov; Harvey did, however, consider that the first half of the novel was "almost too bloodless", and overall noted its excessive infodumping, and characters who "accept the idea of time travel a little too readily" and show "too little fear".

[7] SF Signal lauded the intricate plotting (wishing for "a time-map of the leap-frogging made by the [characters], just to [see] its carefully crafted structure"), but observed that this came at the cost of characterization, emphasizing that Heron's motivation seems unclear and contradictory, and that Sierra's relationship with Alcibiades "somehow seemed unjustified".