I had never read this "episode" in the Time Wars series, previously. I had read all of the others, when they originally came out, but this and the next had never appeared in my local bookstores, at the time and then the series just vanished, along with the publishing industry's entire midlist of science fiction, fantasy, and mystery series. Now I have one more to go and the author is at work on a long-delayed new book in the series, to be self-published. Yay!

The impetus of this adventure is an oracle meeting Gaius Julius Caesar, just prior to Caesar crossing the Rubicon and appointing himself emperor. As in the histories, this oracle warns Caesar about the Ides of March, but unlike the histories, his warning is far too specific, including the names of his would-be assassins. One of his aides being an imbedded member of the Temporal Army Observer Corps, word gets back to our heroes and the mission is, essentially, to ensure that Caesar actually dies as history records he did. (the plot of the series revolves around avoiding intentional or accidental changes to history that could cause a timestream split).

Mystery, adventure, buckling of swashes, thrills and combat! Fun, fun, fun!

If you weren't reading a book, you'd end up needing a scorecard to keep all the sides clear. Not counting the contemporary Romans and Egyptians, you have the Temporal Intelligence Agency (the good guys), the Strategic Operations Group (the bad guys) from an alternate timeline which wants to damage "our" timeline, as well as the Underground (basically a time-traveling version of the seedy side of town), and the Network (the equivalent of a temporal mafia). Yes, over the course of the series things get complicated. And that's not even counting the mysterious and nigh-superhuman Dr. Darkness (the man who is faster than light-- due to a temporal experiment that has effectively made him able to teleport through time, though at the eventual cost of his life) who's motives are completely unknown, beyond what he chooses to share.

As with the others, if you liked any of the Timewars books, you'll like this one. Especially if you have any interest in the period or the historical figures. Hawke does his research (I have to ask him about how much he had to do) and it feels like the period characters and details are (as usual) far greater than one would expect, from an "adventure story". Not to mention the head-twisting discussions about what they refer to as "Zen Physics", as it relates to everything they've learned about time travel. An interesting spin on the grandfather paradox, included. ( )

On the night before crossing the Rubicon, Julius Caesar summons an oracle to discover what the future holds for him. To the astonishment of his aide, Lucius Septimus — the cover identity of Jonathan Travers, a time-traveling observer from the 27th century — the oracle not only warns Caesar of his assassination but names the men involved. Fearing that he has stumbled across an attempt by agents of an alternate timeline to create a temporal disruption, Travers contacts his superiors in the future. Soon the crack Time Commandos of the First Division — Lucas Priest, Finn Delaney, and Andre Cross — are sent back to ensure that events proceed as needed. But with a rogue colleague, a temporal criminal, and a group of time terrorists involved, the situation threatens to spiral out of control — taking all of history with it.

The penultimate volume of Simon Hawke’s Timewars series contains nearly every element familiar to readers of the earlier books in it. Once again the Time Commandos go charging into the past, where they socialize with the great figures of the era while resolving whatever emergency required addressing. Unlike nearly all of the previous volumes, there are no characters inserted from famous works of literature, just the major personalities of Caesar’s time. Yet while an entertaining enough read, the pacing is marred by Hawke's all-too-frequent resort to information dumps throughout the narrative. Though the amount of Hawke’s background research is impressive (even if none of it alerted him to the fact that the title of imperator in the Republican era didn't make Caesar an emperor), here it's employed far too often to pad out a thin story. Perhaps this reflects a certain boredom on Hawke's part with the series, which, if true, was unfortunate given how many rich possibilities remained untapped by the end of it. ( )

This is a very strange book. Unlike the others, it takes more than half the book for the action to begin. The first half of the book reads rather more like a stolid history lecture than a novel. And rather than providing wonderful character studies, the narrative is bogged down in local detail that somehow avoids an immersion effect and instead becomes more of a textbook. And weirdly, comparisons are frequently made to "modern day" equivalents in order to illustrate a point. The only trouble is, the "modern day" seems to be, not "Plus Time" but the time when the actual book was written. "Modern day" is meant to be contemporary with the reader, thus creating a jarring anomaly in the narrative. It almost seems like a different writer, with Simon Hawke coming in for the action.

On the positive side, here's a whole book with no Drakov! Drakov might be an interesting character, but watching him do ever more mad things book after book becomes somewhat tiresome after a while. Perhaps Hawke realised this, and Cleopatra makes a pleasant change of pace.

The other really interesting aspect of the book is the story progression. It is now clear that the series really did always have a story arc, and did not simply peter out after 12 titles. There are interesting new developments as well as some unstated but fascinating questions raised. Despite the lamentable overall reduction of quality as the series draws towards its conclusion, it is now clear that it is definitely worth reading the final title, to find out the answer to life, the universe and everything! ( )

In book 11 of the Time Wars series, Mr. Hawke gets his act together. The story starts on the outskirts of Rome, 49 B.C.E. The night before Julius Caeser's march on Rome, an oracle comes and warns him of his assassination--awaiting him five years in the future--and names his assassins. Caeser is impressed, but not as much as his aide Lucius, who is really a deep cover agent of the Temporal Corps. Lucius contacts TAC headquarters and the Time Commandos are sent back to investigate. They have the unpleasant task of flushing out the enemy agents and ensuring that the charismatic dictator of Rome meets his doom. While The Cleopatra Crisis is not the best in the series, but it's a definite improvement from past efforts. Like the more recent novels in the series, it's based on history rather than a literary work. Even better, a certain recurring villian is absent, giving Mr. Hawke a chance to introduce us to some new bad guys as well as the politics and culture of ancient Rome. It's a book I would definitely recommend checking out.
--J. ( )