The Timekeeper Conspiracy by Simon Hawke

Most of the details involving how this series started were covered in the review of the first book, The Ivanhoe Gambit. Since I don't want to rehash the setup every time, I have reclassified a special listing for these books. If you click on "Time Wars series" on the right side of this web page, you will see the entire list of books I have reviwed to date.

The second book in the "Time Wars" series, The Timekeeper Conspiracy involves a renegade terrorist group out to destroy the war machine. The Timekeepers have a goal to create disturbances that will force the entity governing time stasis to exert a lot of manpower to prevent time splits, thus forcing them to eventually quit using time travel altogether.

The second book takes place in 17th Paris, and as with the previous book, many of the characters are "real" historical figures whom we readers always thought were just fictional. To wit. the time Commandos interact with the characters from The Three Musketeers here. i.e. Athos, Porthos, Aramis, D'Artagnan. And a new, yet familiar ally, comes into the fight. Andre de la Croix, the French woman posing as a male knight, has come to 17th century Paris with a deserter from the Time army.

The renegade Timekeepers are led by a maniacal Adrian Taylor, whom at the start of this novel, has just had himself transgendered to look like Milady de Winter, another important character from the Dumas novel. More and more however, the man Taylor becomes overtaken by the pesonality of the character he has taken and becomes more demented.

The Time Commandos, as they are called from this novel on, have their hands full, not only dealing with the terrorist group, but also with a CIA-like group (conveniently called the TIA here) who seems determined not to let them have all the information they need to complete their mission.

I rate this one 7 stars.

The Ivanhoe Gambit by Simon Hawke

The Time Wars series, beginning with this, the first book, is an intricate series involving time travel, psychotic villains, and intricate plots to disrupt the timestream, thus creating an alternate universe.

The basic premise is this. Sometime in the 25th century time travel was discovered. The powers that be decided to use this science for their own purposes, and created a division of the armed services, specifically with the goal of sending trained soldiers back in time to fight in armies of the past. The result of their performance was then used to determine the outcome of disagreements between countries of the present, rather than having them fight and destroy property and planet in said present.


The interesting thing is that in each of the series, the story centers around a "fictional" tale, only in the terms of the novel, the "fictional" characters were actually real persons in the past. Take for instance this one. The story centers around an nefarious plot by one person from the future, an Observer (a high-ranking official in the Time Forces), to take over as Richard III, king of England in the late 12th century, and live out his life. By doing this though, he would create the ever looming time split, because the real Richard died in battle.

Enter the Time Commandos. They go back in time and infiltrate the time line posing as Ivanhoe and Robin Hood and Little John, all of whom we take for granted as fiction, but who in terms of the series, were actually real people.

The main characters from the start are Lucas Priest and Finn Delaney, respectively "Sir Wilfred Ivanhoe" and "Little John" of Robin Hood's clan. These two and two fellow soldiers must somehow find and stop the renegade Observer. Along the way, they encounter a woman posing as a male knight, Andre de la Croix, who also becomes somewhat of an ally.


I rate the first book 8 stars.