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TimeWars #4
The Zenda Vendetta
In he kingdom of Ruritania, Prince Rudolf is about to be crowned king. Instead, due to the machinations of his half-brother, he becomes the "Prisoner of Zenda."
That was back in the 19th century. But history is about to repeat itself--with a twist. The TIMEKEEPERS, the terrorist underground from the 27th century, have traveled backward once again to try and sabotage the course of history.
However insignificant Ruritania may be, the slightest tampering with the past would have incalculable consequences for the present. The commandos of the Temporal Intelligence Agency, Lucas Priest, Finn Delaney and Andre Cross, have another temporal adjustment on their hands. And all they have for a guide is an obscure 19th century novel!
That was back in the 19th century. But history is about to repeat itself--with a twist. The TIMEKEEPERS, the terrorist underground from the 27th century, have traveled backward once again to try and sabotage the course of history.
However insignificant Ruritania may be, the slightest tampering with the past would have incalculable consequences for the present. The commandos of the Temporal Intelligence Agency, Lucas Priest, Finn Delaney and Andre Cross, have another temporal adjustment on their hands. And all they have for a guide is an obscure 19th century novel!
224 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1985
4 people are currently reading
140 people want to read
About the author
Simon Hawke
90 books238 followersAlso published as J.D. Masters.
He was born Nicholas Valentin Yermakov, but began writing as Simon Hawke in 1984 and later changed his legal name to Hawke. He has also written near future adventure novels under the penname "J. D. Masters" and mystery novels.
He was born Nicholas Valentin Yermakov, but began writing as Simon Hawke in 1984 and later changed his legal name to Hawke. He has also written near future adventure novels under the penname "J. D. Masters" and mystery novels.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 4, 2025
Our library bookstore sells paperbacks for 25 cents. It makes it worth trying random old books, and that's why I got this one. The title attracted my eye - I've read The Prisoner of Zenda - and I don't mind starting a series somewhere in the middle. I'm glad I tried this one, it was different and fun.
I struggled at first to understand who was on which side of the Time War, and what it was really about. There's a timeline in front of the book but I have to say it didn't make everything really clear. I ended up keeping a list of characters and which group they belonged to, moving them around as new information appeared, and that helped.
Basically this is the tale of four people who go back in time to Ruritania and join in the plot of the classic story. Their arch rivals are also there, trying to change how the tale works out, and for some reason this is really important for the future. (At this point I had to accept that it didn't all make sense to me. Suspension of disbelief is necessary here.) At times I thought the book slowed down a bit much, but basically I enjoyed it, and the ending is a roller coaster ride. I liked this well enough to track down the first in the series; I'm a sucker for Robin Hood, so I'm eager to get my hands on it. After I read that, maybe this book will make a bit more sense, too. 3 pleased stars.
I struggled at first to understand who was on which side of the Time War, and what it was really about. There's a timeline in front of the book but I have to say it didn't make everything really clear. I ended up keeping a list of characters and which group they belonged to, moving them around as new information appeared, and that helped.
Basically this is the tale of four people who go back in time to Ruritania and join in the plot of the classic story. Their arch rivals are also there, trying to change how the tale works out, and for some reason this is really important for the future. (At this point I had to accept that it didn't all make sense to me. Suspension of disbelief is necessary here.) At times I thought the book slowed down a bit much, but basically I enjoyed it, and the ending is a roller coaster ride. I liked this well enough to track down the first in the series; I'm a sucker for Robin Hood, so I'm eager to get my hands on it. After I read that, maybe this book will make a bit more sense, too. 3 pleased stars.
April 7, 2016
The 20th book I know I've read by Hawke.
The gang's back, this time with the direct involvement of their boss, Moses Forrester. It appears that Forrester did some 'naughty' stuff on his first mission, which resulted in a kid (don't worry; this comes up immediately in the book). The kid, who now looks about 30 but is actually 79, and an old flame of Forrester's decide on some payback. Oh, and they are the last members of TimeKeepers still around, so there's that as well.
As I mentioned in my last review, the TimeWars, at least up to then, and this book, does not relate to warring times or the like. But to one time that decides to settle their disputes by inserting members of 27th century military personal back in time. During conflicts. And 'judge' the results. I mention this issue because it's mentioned several times in this book. It's the purpose behind TimeKeepers. They are like Green Peace - in that Green Peace has been known to ram whaling boats to stop the people on the boats from whaling. Well, TimeKeepers fuck with time to try to show that fighting wars back in time is super stupid. As any sane person would know without having to have them involved (hell, the guy who invented the devices that allow time travel knew it, got insane over it, and killed himself over it).
So, in this specific instance, a specific person is about to be crowned king in some made up country in Central Europe in 1891. That country being a ‘vest pocket’ kingdom named ‘Ruritania’. Which is both a fictional country, and something that popped up in real, fiction, books way back when. The TimeKeepers, in the form of this really super hot chick, and Forrester’s son, are attempting to both disrupt this crowning moment, while also kill Andre Cross, Lucas Priest, and Finn Delaney. They’d like to get Forrester to, though he is desk bound now-a-days so that’s unlikely (ha, send him a letter, he’ll travel in time).
I’d mentioned before, in another review, that I liked how Hawke combined real world history with a science fiction/time travel story. Though I didn’t specifically like the ‘good guys’. Well, that mostly continues in this book. Mostly because the ‘bad guys’ side seems more reasonable than whatever weird thing the ‘good guys’ are fighting for. It’s vaguely annoying that I kind of entered this series a while back (as in the 1980s, 1990s) with this idea that the TimeWars people were working to protect time. To keep it from destabilizing. Annoying because, while that is true, for the most part they are making ‘adjustment’s that they wouldn’t have to be making if they weren’t fucking back in time to begin with. But, whatever.
I entered this book somewhat reluctantly because I knew, unlike past books, this one would be fiction set in . . . fiction. As in, instead of the story set against ‘stuff’ that really happened back in time, the story is set against. . well, the idea of something that could have happened back in time. Sure, Ruritania popped up in a set of books released in the late 1890s, but it’s still a fictional country. And sure, the last book by Hawke, the Pimpernel Plot one, involved a fictional character as the back story (from a play from something like 1905), but it still had as it’s backing the real French Revolution (hmm, and heh, I just learned that one of the main villains in that book, Chauvelin, actually is based on a real person who actually lived through the time and was an officer under Napoleon. Unlike how the book just tossed out something like ‘it doesn’t matter that he died, he was going to die in a year anyway’).
As happens, I distracted myself.
I was reluctant to begin this book because it seemed to be veering away from one of the things I liked about the series (time travels working and acting in a real world historical setting). But I did begin the book, and I found it actually quite entertaining. It was ‘good enough’. I’d give it around a 3.7 or 3.8 rating.
April 7 2016
The gang's back, this time with the direct involvement of their boss, Moses Forrester. It appears that Forrester did some 'naughty' stuff on his first mission, which resulted in a kid (don't worry; this comes up immediately in the book). The kid, who now looks about 30 but is actually 79, and an old flame of Forrester's decide on some payback. Oh, and they are the last members of TimeKeepers still around, so there's that as well.
As I mentioned in my last review, the TimeWars, at least up to then, and this book, does not relate to warring times or the like. But to one time that decides to settle their disputes by inserting members of 27th century military personal back in time. During conflicts. And 'judge' the results. I mention this issue because it's mentioned several times in this book. It's the purpose behind TimeKeepers. They are like Green Peace - in that Green Peace has been known to ram whaling boats to stop the people on the boats from whaling. Well, TimeKeepers fuck with time to try to show that fighting wars back in time is super stupid. As any sane person would know without having to have them involved (hell, the guy who invented the devices that allow time travel knew it, got insane over it, and killed himself over it).
So, in this specific instance, a specific person is about to be crowned king in some made up country in Central Europe in 1891. That country being a ‘vest pocket’ kingdom named ‘Ruritania’. Which is both a fictional country, and something that popped up in real, fiction, books way back when. The TimeKeepers, in the form of this really super hot chick, and Forrester’s son, are attempting to both disrupt this crowning moment, while also kill Andre Cross, Lucas Priest, and Finn Delaney. They’d like to get Forrester to, though he is desk bound now-a-days so that’s unlikely (ha, send him a letter, he’ll travel in time).
I’d mentioned before, in another review, that I liked how Hawke combined real world history with a science fiction/time travel story. Though I didn’t specifically like the ‘good guys’. Well, that mostly continues in this book. Mostly because the ‘bad guys’ side seems more reasonable than whatever weird thing the ‘good guys’ are fighting for. It’s vaguely annoying that I kind of entered this series a while back (as in the 1980s, 1990s) with this idea that the TimeWars people were working to protect time. To keep it from destabilizing. Annoying because, while that is true, for the most part they are making ‘adjustment’s that they wouldn’t have to be making if they weren’t fucking back in time to begin with. But, whatever.
I entered this book somewhat reluctantly because I knew, unlike past books, this one would be fiction set in . . . fiction. As in, instead of the story set against ‘stuff’ that really happened back in time, the story is set against. . well, the idea of something that could have happened back in time. Sure, Ruritania popped up in a set of books released in the late 1890s, but it’s still a fictional country. And sure, the last book by Hawke, the Pimpernel Plot one, involved a fictional character as the back story (from a play from something like 1905), but it still had as it’s backing the real French Revolution (hmm, and heh, I just learned that one of the main villains in that book, Chauvelin, actually is based on a real person who actually lived through the time and was an officer under Napoleon. Unlike how the book just tossed out something like ‘it doesn’t matter that he died, he was going to die in a year anyway’).
As happens, I distracted myself.
I was reluctant to begin this book because it seemed to be veering away from one of the things I liked about the series (time travels working and acting in a real world historical setting). But I did begin the book, and I found it actually quite entertaining. It was ‘good enough’. I’d give it around a 3.7 or 3.8 rating.
April 7 2016
November 30, 2017
Love the way fictional characters are brought to life
I love the way this time travel series goes back in time and encounters fictional characters ( aka Robin Hood, or the Prisoner of Zenda) as if they were real historical figures. There is a familiarity to the scenes and characters for those who have read the Prisoner of Zenda, yet this story is so much more as our team (Lucas, Finn and Andre) work to preserve history, knowing they are starting at a disadvantage because someone has made sure a key player is out of position.
One of the particularly interesting dynamics, to me, in this series, is seeing how autonomous team members end up being. They all know the goal they are out to achieve, and they avoid bringing a lot of inappropriate future tech back with them, so frequently they are out of touch with one another, relying on the other to be doing whatever they can to save the Prisoner of Zenda, and defeat the enemies of the book.
In this book the characters come face to face with the reality that actions not only have consequences, but unintended consequences... and in this Universe either, or both, can come back to haunt you.
I love the way this time travel series goes back in time and encounters fictional characters ( aka Robin Hood, or the Prisoner of Zenda) as if they were real historical figures. There is a familiarity to the scenes and characters for those who have read the Prisoner of Zenda, yet this story is so much more as our team (Lucas, Finn and Andre) work to preserve history, knowing they are starting at a disadvantage because someone has made sure a key player is out of position.
One of the particularly interesting dynamics, to me, in this series, is seeing how autonomous team members end up being. They all know the goal they are out to achieve, and they avoid bringing a lot of inappropriate future tech back with them, so frequently they are out of touch with one another, relying on the other to be doing whatever they can to save the Prisoner of Zenda, and defeat the enemies of the book.
In this book the characters come face to face with the reality that actions not only have consequences, but unintended consequences... and in this Universe either, or both, can come back to haunt you.
January 18, 2024
Volume 4 of Simon Hawke's Time Wars series, The Zenda Vendetta is really Finn's book, but also the squad's superior officer's. As usual, history and literature combine as temporal terrorists (a couple of great villains, but I'm just as interested in the local baddies) hit Ruritania during the events that allegedly inspired The Prisoner of Zenda. The villains have deep connections to boss man Moses Forrester, which involves him in an adjustment for the first time, and his back story is good too. I'm not sure the novel really sells me on the "Fate Factor" that ties history in knots of coincidence, but it's the conceit that forces Finn to take Rassendyll's place in the story (perhaps to explain why it isn't Lucas doing so using the facial reconstruction techniques of the other books) and he acquits himself quite well in the triple role. Lucas and Andre are sidelined for much of this, but they're eventually in the direst of straits, and there's real momentum in the back half of the book, as if possessed by the romantic swashbuckler spirit of Anthony Hope's original story. Fun and exciting.
June 10, 2023
A highly entertaining read. Fun!
February 25, 2025
Anthony Hope’s original book, The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), is a dashing tale of adventure in a middle European kingdom. Rudolf, about to be crowned king of Ruritania, is kidnapped by Black Michael, his half-brother; but just then an Englishman, also called Rudolf and bearing a remarkable resemblance to his namesake (of whom he’s a distant blood relation), happens to visit the country and is persuaded by a pair of loyalists to impersonate the kidnapped king until he can be rescued. There are castles to be stormed, swordsmen to be outfought, and a beautiful princess who falls in love with the fake king.
It’s a robust plot with some potentially lively characters. But the English hero, though brave and reasonably honourable, is an overgrown schoolboy and almost as much of a bullet-headed oaf as the members of the gang he’s up against. The conduct of his romance with the rather insipid princess Flavia is quite implausible.
A good yarn, then, but not especially well told.
Much later, along comes Simon Hawke, in search of somewhere new to send his time commandos (already veterans of three previous novels); and he cheekily clocks them back from 27th century Los Angeles to 19th century Ruritania, charged with the unlikely mission of preserving the course of history as documented in Hope’s novel. As usual, the course of ‘history’ is endangered by the Timekeepers, a by now seriously depleted guerilla organisation bent on sabotaging the time stream. This time, they’ve killed Rudolf Rassendyll before he reaches Ruritania, forcing the Temporal Corps to substitute one of its own men—who, by happy coincidence, happens to resemble both Rudolfs as closely as they resemble each other.
The plot of Hawke’s book follows the original quite closely for some time, and then diverges only in detail, but it does of course add a number of new characters and a whole new level of intrigue, and, although not a long novel, it’s about 50% longer than the original.
It seems to me that the result is something more than mere plagiarism. In the same way as an author will sometimes show the same fictional events from the viewpoint of different characters, so Simon Hawke gives us a rerun of the same fictional events—at least from the same starting point—from the viewpoint of a different author. It could be a new art form. I wonder whether Hawke happened to read David Langford’s 1977 short story, “Accretion”, which suggested something rather similar.
Although essentially a writer of action adventures, Hawke is a man of some intelligence and has his thoughtful side—more than can be said of Hope. Thus, in his book, Hawke not only deals with the extra plot complications he introduces, he also enlarges and improves on the original characterizations, making most of the participants more likeable and interesting than Hope managed to do; and yet without fundamentally changing their natures. Being, evidently, a believer in female equality (which Hope certainly wasn’t), he brings on one of his own strong female characters as the chief Timekeeper; and he goes to some trouble to improve the credibility of the impostor’s relationship with the princess.
I have no biographical details on Simon Hawke, but he must have spent some time in the US army, possibly as one of the Vietnam draftees, and his military personnel have an authentic-seeming weary cynicism. He’s clearly more interested in intrigue and strategy than in violence, but he seems to have the soldier’s acceptance of violence as part of the job, and he manages to put it over with a rather clinical detachment and a redeeming lack of enthusiasm. Although his regular characters are part of a military organisation, they function more like secret agents.
I have to admire the fluency with which he turns out these novels. It seems almost effortless. Of course, he’s helped by getting much of the framework of each story from someone else; but I think he contributes enough of his own to make the exercise worthwhile.
It’s a robust plot with some potentially lively characters. But the English hero, though brave and reasonably honourable, is an overgrown schoolboy and almost as much of a bullet-headed oaf as the members of the gang he’s up against. The conduct of his romance with the rather insipid princess Flavia is quite implausible.
A good yarn, then, but not especially well told.
Much later, along comes Simon Hawke, in search of somewhere new to send his time commandos (already veterans of three previous novels); and he cheekily clocks them back from 27th century Los Angeles to 19th century Ruritania, charged with the unlikely mission of preserving the course of history as documented in Hope’s novel. As usual, the course of ‘history’ is endangered by the Timekeepers, a by now seriously depleted guerilla organisation bent on sabotaging the time stream. This time, they’ve killed Rudolf Rassendyll before he reaches Ruritania, forcing the Temporal Corps to substitute one of its own men—who, by happy coincidence, happens to resemble both Rudolfs as closely as they resemble each other.
The plot of Hawke’s book follows the original quite closely for some time, and then diverges only in detail, but it does of course add a number of new characters and a whole new level of intrigue, and, although not a long novel, it’s about 50% longer than the original.
It seems to me that the result is something more than mere plagiarism. In the same way as an author will sometimes show the same fictional events from the viewpoint of different characters, so Simon Hawke gives us a rerun of the same fictional events—at least from the same starting point—from the viewpoint of a different author. It could be a new art form. I wonder whether Hawke happened to read David Langford’s 1977 short story, “Accretion”, which suggested something rather similar.
Although essentially a writer of action adventures, Hawke is a man of some intelligence and has his thoughtful side—more than can be said of Hope. Thus, in his book, Hawke not only deals with the extra plot complications he introduces, he also enlarges and improves on the original characterizations, making most of the participants more likeable and interesting than Hope managed to do; and yet without fundamentally changing their natures. Being, evidently, a believer in female equality (which Hope certainly wasn’t), he brings on one of his own strong female characters as the chief Timekeeper; and he goes to some trouble to improve the credibility of the impostor’s relationship with the princess.
I have no biographical details on Simon Hawke, but he must have spent some time in the US army, possibly as one of the Vietnam draftees, and his military personnel have an authentic-seeming weary cynicism. He’s clearly more interested in intrigue and strategy than in violence, but he seems to have the soldier’s acceptance of violence as part of the job, and he manages to put it over with a rather clinical detachment and a redeeming lack of enthusiasm. Although his regular characters are part of a military organisation, they function more like secret agents.
I have to admire the fluency with which he turns out these novels. It seems almost effortless. Of course, he’s helped by getting much of the framework of each story from someone else; but I think he contributes enough of his own to make the exercise worthwhile.
March 2, 2014
So the series keeps up the thrills and action of the earlier entries only this time they actually make reference to the fictional book that the events are based (in, around, on?) although it is not as complete as they would want it to be. There are some interesting depths added to the characters and the situation which although seem slight I feel add weight to the storyline - after all you cannot have the commandos turn up - solve the problem and the world (or time line) to rights again and walk away congratulating each other with out some sort of ramifications.
Yes there is more to come - but that is all part of the appeal of a very cleverly through science fiction time travelling adventure.
Yes there is more to come - but that is all part of the appeal of a very cleverly through science fiction time travelling adventure.
December 22, 2011
#4 in Simon Hawke's TimeWars was just as thrilling as all the others, why it has 4 stars is the fact that I just wasn't into it as much. But I did love the Forrester/Drakov relationship immensely and ,at one time, feared for Finn Delaney's life. So it was good, just not the best.
August 20, 2014
Still like the series, but Hawke's better at keeping relationships glib. I know the side plot was carried through, but it wasn't a part I liked much. Giving depth to shallow characters doesn't work often and his shallow characters are fine as they are.
August 9, 2014
Now to read the book this was based off.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews