The Zenda Vendetta

If your previous experience with Hawke is drawn from the WIZARD OF 4TH STREET series, note that Hawke has addressed the issue of series continuity differently in the TimeWars books. Each is a largely self-contained scenario, with a core collection of characters carrying over from book to book, so that large blocks of exposition to bring new readers up to date are not needed even when dealing with continuing plot threads. However, if you start with this book, you'll spoil some of the surprises in store from the first 3 books since you'll know too much about some of the characters; if that matters to you, bail out of this review *now*. Each TimeWars book opens with "A Chronological History of the Time Wars", a timeline beginning with Mensinger's invention of the chronoplate in 2425. His heirs lost legal control of the technology, and in 2492, a proposal for "an end to war in our time" led humanity down the path leading to the Time Wars, in which conflicts were settled by refereed "wars" in which the disputants' soldiers were infiltrated into opposing forces in a past war, and the referees keep score by how many of each side survive. This, of course, means that history now needs human guardians, to prevent accidents - or sabotage - from altering the flow of history. Those guardians are the Time Commandos; their star adjustment team, rather than the Time Wars proper, is the focus of the series. By this point in the series, the adjustment team consists of Andre Cross, Finn Delaney, and Lucas Priest, with their commander, Moses Forrester, in the background. As in the preceding 3 Time Wars stories, the temporal adjustment that the Time Commandos must make involves incidents that to them historical but to us (the readers) are drawn from a famous novel - in this case, Anthony Hope's THE PRISONER OF ZENDA. (Judging from the briefing received by the adjustment team, the sequel, RUPERT OF HENTZAU, is secret history in the TimeWars universe.) Incidentally, starting with the next book in the series, THE NAUTILUS SANCTION, Hawke began departing from the famous-novel-as-history pattern. As in #3, THE PIMPERNEL PLOT, Finn Delaney must replace an obscure historical figure who has been murdered by a time traveller, but in this case the murderer was a fugitive from justice: one of the Timekeepers' organization from book #2. Worse, another Timekeeper, Sophia Falco, was a sleeper agent in the Temporal Intelligence Agency, and not only murdered one of their most dangerous agents, but was once romantically involved with Forrester. But the long-term problem turns out to be one of the more junior Timekeepers, Nikolai Drakov, whose relationship with Forrester is even more complicated than Falco's. The Timekeepers are holed up in Zenda Castle, and have added many concealed high-tech defenses, in addition to its already formidable built-in defenses. (Andre, asked for a professional opinion on how she would have taken the castle if she'd had to, promptly replies, "I woul

The Timewars series was some of the best sci-fi/action series that I have ever read. I read them years ago and kept them all and plan on re-reading them. A must read.

I have all of the books in Simon Hawke's Time Wars Series and this is one of my Favorites! He gave a new twist to Prisoner of Zenda's tale of doubles and mistaken identities. Finn Delany, one of the major characters in this series, turns out to look just like Rudolf Rassendyll, who in turn bares a strange ressemblance to his distant relative, the King of Ruritania. Of course, there are no coincidences in time travel.Finn finds himself playing a man playing a King and the results are highly entertaining.