Patton's Spaceship (Timeline Wars #1) by John Barnes

Patton's Spaceship by John Barnes

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


This book isn’t exactly what I had expected – and what I had expected is one of the reasons that it took me *counts* 20 years to read this book. Yes, really, 20 years. I knew of the series near to when it was first published in 1997, and I probably had a used copy of the first book shortly thereafter. And . . . . did no t read it until this year. 20 years later.

Why? I expected that this book would be just like every other book that involved time lines and multiple universes. There’s Simon Hawke’s TimeWars, several short stories (and possibly books) by Poul Anderson, a series by David Weber, etc. – lots and lots of books that involved either two or more forces battling wars within time (TimeWars; Anderson’s short stories), or across universes (Weber’s series, and, later in the series, TimeWars). And while I liked that kind of thing, there is such a thing as getting overwhelmed with the same topic getting repeated over and over again.

So, what is it exactly I got this time? The first 25.23% of the book was an interesting look at an action/suspense/private investigator-bodyguard mystery. Quite detailed, quite interesting, and quite emotional. And then, finally, we got to the science fiction part.

And we, the readers, find – two competing forces battling each other through multiple universes. But, before you can say ‘training montage’ (no training actually occurs), the guy being recruited, Mark Strang, gets himself separated from the time traveling people and – impulsively, stuck on another world – a timeline wherein Hitler won (one of the 800 such timelines (vast majority, for those following along, have Hitler lose)). He is there on this world, trying to figure out how to interact, taking out some of the ‘Closers’ (the name of the ‘evil’ faction involved in the ‘Timeline Wars’ (as the back over the book calls it), but mostly this isn’t fight between two different time periods/sets of timelines/etc. It is the journey of a man who found himself on the wrong world. A Nazi controlled world. A world wherein Nazi’s took over the USA – but there are still forces trying to fight back. And Mark attempts to find them.

This book surprised me at just how good it was – just how interesting and exciting everything was. And, for that matter, just how violent it was. (heck, there’s even mention of gorgeous naked (or where they topless?) female slaves . . . seen in passing, glimpsed, not important to the story – but unexpected in and of itself to see).

If I had to come up with a complaint, a flaw it would be one specific issue – because of reasons fully explained in the book, Mark Strang became a trained operative – skilled with martial arts (though that training started when he was a kid before the ‘reasons’ occurred), gun use, body-guarding, private investigating, and art history (he had been heading for a doctorate in art history when his world imploded). But it was stressed a large number of times that he had no military training. He didn’t exactly become a military genius, or anything like that, no, it’s just that he was shown with skills that it had been kind of stressed hard he hadn’t gotten. Counter-argument to that is that much of what he did could have been picked up when he went all ‘commando’ like back in his own time period. It’s just that he was shown to be a good skilled body-guard, not Rambo, prior to going to another world and . . . doing what he did (where, fair enough, he didn’t go Rambo, he just became a very good instructor of military security people – also, he did kind of go all Rambo like in a few occasions).

Right, so, quite fun, interesting, great book.

Rating: 4.36

June 7 2017




View all my reviews

The Khyber Connection by Simon Hawke

The Khyber Connection
by Simon Hawke
Pages: 170
Date: October 15 2015 (originally 1986)
Publisher: Self (originally Ace)
Series: TimeWars (6th in series)

Review
Rating: 2.8 out of 5.0
Read: April 23 2016

In this sixth book in the series, we see the fight of the British to expand their empire in the Hindu Kush. Well, they are already there, more like we see an uprising that is religiously driven among the natives of the region against the British.

Into this scenario we have an actual parallel time line impose itself on evens, as opposed to past books that seemed to imply that parallel time-lines weren't possible - or at the very least, that if a time line split, 'it'd be the end of everything'. Well, apparently some of the weapons used by the time comandos packed a mighty punch. Most of which got sent along, vaguely magically, to some distant point. At least that's what they thought. Unbeknownst to them, the energy actually was being sent into a parallel time line - and killing millions. Naturally that time line, when it got the opportunity, launched an actual time war upon those knowingly or unknowingly kiling them.

An interesting enough book. Certain points seemed to have had odd moments of info dumps, which were both odd and unneeded. And then there was the case of Col. Priest for some reason being referred to as Major Priest. He was a Colonel in one or more previous books. A light Colonel, but still, not a Major. Makes me wonder if I've somehow drifted into some third time line.

Oh, and one last note - that whole business involving that Dr. Darkness guy? Quite annoying.

April 23 2016

Date Knight by Bridget Essex

Date Knight
by Bridget Essex
Pages: 259
Date: October 29 2015
Publisher: Rose and Star Press
Series: The Knight Legends (3rd in series)

Review
Rating: 2.8 out of 5.0
Read: December 28 to 29 2015

*Helpful hint: If you are reading this review before reading anything in this series, read A Knight to Remember then this book here (which is a direct sequel, both in time and in characters), then read Forever and a Knight (which, chronologically, actually takes place after Date Knight. I think; also involves different characters.)*

It’s unfortunate but I didn’t really have ‘fun’ with this book. Cutting off everything from roughly 0% to 68%, and everything from 96% to 100% and the book was interesting and fun-ish.

The beginning part of the book, at least up to 50 percent had ‘stuff’ happening, but it was really annoyingly wordy. Calling it purple prose might be a bit too strong, but at the very least it was leaning heavily in that direction. Could probably have been recorded with fewer words, less extravagant words. Well, melodramatic? Something.

The book opens on the one week anniversary of Virago returning from her world to be with Holly. They plan to celebrate with a date night. While heading back from a day of watching Virago joust, and get ready for the night, it gets all stormy and stuff. They get caught in rain. Lightning. Holly looks out into her backyard and . . . what do you know, there’s a bunch of women in armor back there. Virago’s quite happy. For they are ‘her’ knights (and, in addition there is also, as eventually realized, her Queen). They’ve come because they need Virago because the Queen’s life is in danger (if it matters at any point, the Queen is named Calla).

First, though, they go paint the town red, so to speak. Holly leads the merry band of knights and Queen to a lesbian bar in Boston. They get drunk, they flirt, do stuff. Then everything gets all weird when the crowd suddenly goes all quiet. And stare. At the front door, through which struts an angry woman dressed in all black armor. Vibrating with power. Accusing Virago of doing evil (as in kidnapping the queen). Eventually it comes out that, no, the queen hadn’t been kidnapped. And stuff. And they have to go back NOW! Or something. So they go back to Holly’s place so that she can get her dog. And lots of clothing. Which she doesn’t actually need, but whatever (the clothing that is; or, for that matter, the dog). All that I’ve conveyed took 50% of the book to convey. Much better than I am here, of course, but still. It was, quite frankly, not that interesting to me.

The vast majority of the rest of the book takes place back on Virago’s planet. Whose name isn’t in the book description and I don’t really know how to spell it. Aorgatoara or something like that. Things are tense. Everyone’s nervous that ‘something’ is going to happen. And the queen has to continuously put herself into danger because her city is hosting the Hero’s Tournament. And therefore if she isn’t out in the open, she’d be admitting weakness, and that’d be exactly like being defeated in war. So she has to be out there. Eventually the big bad guy finally attacks, stuff occurs, the end of the book. This occurs in the second half of the book. And, for the most part, was interesting enough, to be somewhat riveting. At least some scenes here and there.

Note - there some plot holes, and inconsistencies. Or, at least, things brought up that are not later of importance. Like, in the beginning of the book the queen is super sad and wants to resign. Which would immediately destabilize the country, and put it into prime 'taking over' mode for evil king of next door country to swoop in and take over. That was badly worded. That early 'I just want to resign' is countered later with a queen in the second half of the book who just wants to do the right thing, and stand up against King Evil; which includes putting herself out there for assassins to try to assassinate. A vague thought I had that I'm not conveying well.

So, as I indicated at the beginning, I didn’t really have the fun with the book that I expected. Part of the ‘decrease’ in tension is the simple fact that I realized instantly that the book I was reading actually took place in time, chronologically, before the second book in the series occurred. And since I’d seen how the world looked in that second book . . . I kind have had a lot of the tension that could have been there just . . . not be there. So, all in all, this barely made it to a 2.8 rating.

December 29 2015