David Weber (1) (1952–)

This book came out in 2019 so I am puzzled as to why it crossed my attention now, 5 years later. I gather it originally came out as a stand-alone novel but now there are three sequels. I'm not so enamored with this book to want to follow up with the rest of the books but it was interesting enough while I was reading it.

In the thirtieth century time travel is common enough that historians can go back in time to observe the actual occurrence, instead of reading articles and books written after the fact. Dr. Raibert Kaminski has been attached to Julius Caesar's command for nine months but he is now on his way back to the 30th century in his ship Kleio. He is accompanied by his friend, Philosophus, who is an AI. Kaminski and all the other time-travellers have been assured that they can't change the past by anything they do when they are in another time. Unfortunately, that isn't true, as Kaminski, Kleio and Philo discover when they try to return home. A huge chronoton storm was caused by an entangling of 16 timelines some time in the 20th century. The storm damaged their ship and knocked them out of non-congruent space into the Libyan desert in 1986. Even when they fixed the ship and managed to jump back to the 30th century it wasn't their timeline they landed in. The timeline they are in is governed by an entitiy called Admin and they don't look kindly at strangers arriving with hardware that uses technology they have outlawed. Kaminski is taken prisoner but Philo and Kleio are able to extract him and flee back in time. The Admin is hot on their heels though because Kaminski proposes to unentangle the timelines which would erase theirs. In order to undentangle the knot Kaminski et al. have to find the specific occurrence that caused all the entanglement. Without elaborating why they need a historian from the 21st century they extract Dr. Benjamin Schroder and his fiancee (and former air force pilot) Elzbieta Abramowski to go back to World War II. In Schroder's timeline Hitler was assassinated in 1940 and that is believed to be the cause of the entanglement. Many fights between Kleio and the Admin's time machines ensue. Since there are sequels to this book, it's not much of a spoiler to say that our heroes are successful.

The authors don't appear to have military training but they seem to be quite enamored of fighting both in the air and on the ground. I suspect they may spend a fair bit of time gaming. That's not really my thing but for those who like it, this book and its sequels may be just what you are looking for.… (more)

Into the Light is the long-delayed, if not long-awaited, sequel to Out of the Dark by David Weber and Chris Kennedy. The invading aliens have been destroyed, and the country is beginning to recover from the apocalypse. The story has second-act problems. The plot focuses on the efforts of the former governor of North Carolina to form a world government that can use the technological head start given us by the aliens to rebuild civilization and make us players in interstellar politics. But it is all a build-up to the military action in To Challenge Heaven, book three of the trilogy. Each episode in the second book is compelling, but a reader is apt to tap the foot and mutter, “Get on with it, please.”… (more)