RogerBW's Blog

The Timekeeper Conspiracy, Simon Hawke 16 June 2022

1984 SF, second of its series. The Timekeepers are terrorists who are trying to prevent time travel – by threatening to cause a catastrophic split in the timestream. In France in 1625?

Again, nobody is surprised that there's an actual d'Artagnan and the rest, not to mention an actual Constance Bonacieux and Milady de Winter. (I can't help feeling that someone should be raising objections to the way fictional characters casually exist.) What's more, this time there's no internal time-travel: our heroes travel out at the start, do the thing, and at the end come back again. (Which is not a bad thing exactly, but it's the easiest and laziest way of writing time travel stories, and the first book avoided that.)

One thing further: although Hawke does try to imply that the major villain was fairly mad even before he got himself surgically altered to impersonate Milady, the fact remains that in this book he's the only gay character, and the only character to have sex reassignment, that we meet. So there's that.

But in spite of these problems there's fun to be had here. We see some of the workings of the Underground (mostly deserters from the Time Wars), and even the terrorists are more than faceless villains: there are clear gradations from "we think this whole business of sending soldiers to fight modern-day battles by proxy in battles of the past is maybe not the best idea" all the way to "we are actively trying to provoke the greatest possible catastrophe", and the lines of those gradations don't necessarly coincide with organisational boundaries. Our heroes, who are soldiers by training, get drafted into an intelligence operation, and it becomes clear that their boss has his own goals… but is also their only way home. (And it's clear that when the dust settles even some of those "maybe not the best idea" people are going to be getting quietly arrested, by the "good guys", because it's really very convenient to have an excuse…)

Add to that our heroes getting to interact with feet-of-clay versions of the Musketeers and others, and plenty of action, and the book doesn't outstay its welcome, at least with me. (Also we have the welcome return of Andre de la Croix, the female warrior disguised as a man – it's a long story – from the first book, who develops a very simple system for telling whether people really are from the future: if they find out she's a woman and still treat her as a person, they must be.)

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: The Ivanhoe Gambit | Series: Time Wars | Next in series: The Pimpernel Plot

Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech aviation base commerce battletech beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2022 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1