"Time Wars #1: The Ivanhoe Gambit" by Simon Hawke | Book Cage Reading Archive

After Victor Milan completely burned down Steele, we need to run back into the loving embrace of J.D. Masters/Simon Hawke. This time, we will be staring his most famous series Time Wars. The Ivanhoe Gambit, this Friday, 5 PM eastern. Don't miss out, or you'll have to invent Minus Time!

@Brockway can I get a pin, please?

Robin Hood huh

No shit

Simon Hawke loves ideas. Including ones he already had

It's weird to have the knight with a tommy gun, right? Like, are they going back to Prohibition Era and then to Medieval times?

Gellaho: I am glad to be done

Also Gellaho: Brand new book series

I was glad to be done with S.L. Hunter's/Victor Milan's hatchet job. I didn't buy these books for decoration

I bought them because I'm insane

Half an hour until TimeWars: The Ivanhoe Gambit. Feast your eyes on this "thrilling" preview.

I missed out on Steele, so I'm excited about TimeWars

Let's see how good a writer Simon Hawke was five years before Steele

It's almost incomprehensible

As a first action our hero, Lucas Priest, flees

I just want to say, before we get properly into it. This premise is dumb. Why did they not test to see if time travel would fuck with stuff?

They just assumed

I'm trying to understand this. Their tour of duty is only measured in the present, I guess

We've immediately been thrown into flashback

To be fair, I'd run too

Do we know why the US army is helping Attila the hun?

Like, what's the benefit of doing that?

They fight their wars in the past

Yeah, but why?

Wait like, it's time slavery?

So, did our new hero have to rape and pillage?

Oh, wait, I regret I asked

Yeah hes just throwing out how he raped peasants and burned villages like "ugh, Mondays right?"

This is so fucking stupid

It's worse than steele

They realise the "prosperity" from having a "wartime economic standard" comes from making shit, right?

Also pillaging loot

In older wars

Which is something you don't have to do if you send your soldiers back to the past

Ok we disagree, but we get along well enough to have negotiations. I'm sure they could have found a better solution than war, but another time.

That's clearly not what wartime economic standard refers to

These SATs are "service aptitude tests." I have no idea what implant education is

Yeah, you can make off with the booty

But it's different

They seem to make a lot of uniforms. Otherwise 2613 seems pretty boring

I sort of feel like maybe, this premise wasn't well thought out

Jesse worries me

Time travel is always bound to have huge plotholes but that's why you typical don't delve too hard into the rules beyond what's strictly necessary to know. The more you spend thinking about it the worse it is

The only way this can make sense is that this is the bullshit reason they give for TimeWar, but later, they reveal the REAL reason

Which will also be stupid I'm certain

Women be choppin'!

Our second rape mention. This is a pleasant read so far.

I'm guessing the chronoplate is how time travel is achieved, but that's not explained

Wait does the vomit just stay there?

Yeah, those lost people are just covered in puke

You'd think eventually they'd at least have rules equivalent to a public pool. No time traveling for 20 minutes after eating fellas.

In the space between spaces, there's the Vomit Zone

Hey, does the puke between time violate conservation of energy?

Stranded in a sea of vomit

So, those two get drunk and talk about nothing. Then the flashback ends. Priest goes back to the same bar

Jesse got stuck in the vomit zone

So like, if a guy gets lost off of earth and in another dimension, that's like a ton of matter just disappearing from the universe, is no one else concerned about the implications of that?

Also, I think they have a solution to their radioactive waste disposal problem.

I don't know that no one is, but I promise Hawke isn't.

It feels like he wanted to write the forever war but back in time.

I don't have the patience to parse this

Okay, so how many soldiers are fighting how many wars at the same time?

It's like Ready Player One for old guys who watch the History Channel all day.

So you die of old age in minutes of real time.

All of them

Okay, but how many soldiers?

Also, Simon Hawke has a rape fantasy thing and it's gonna come up again.

How many people are employed by the time military in combat roles?

If you fight in the Roman age, come back but then go fight in the Napoleonic age, how many times can we deploy you? I think it's infinite.

Does napoleon ever realize he has a bunch of extra future people in his army?

Do they age in the past?

Also, I dont get any of it so far. Was he trying to stop Hannibal?

Wait yes

Yeah so his buddy aged ten years in the past during five minutes passing in real time.

Sorry I had trouble parsing that

That sounds like a pretty shit job

I kind of kept zoning out

This is already so fucking stupid

Also, you'd die of old age before the week ends

Also if they sail with Lord Nelson, is the Time Army also the Time Navy?

Everyone would age out in a few days present and the battles of the past would be heaving with excess future bodies.

So I'm questioning the point of this novel

Like, why was it written?

I want to understand the economy of the 2600s US

Lucas, his buddy Robert Benjamin Johnson, a corporal named Hooker, and some guy named Finn Delaney are going on their own to 12th century England. I guess this is unusual

Cos time travel is cool as shit

Robin Hood fanfiction

Clearly not, this book is boring as fuck

And if they finish they get to be done. Considering there are 11 more books, I don't see how that'll work

I can't not picture the referee in stripes and carrying a whistle.

If they can produce a prefab hut why are they roasting pheasant.

You think someone would figure out the scam and do something to stop them right?

Like, you will never make your whole week

Haaaaaawke!

I forgot to mention, people can live to be hundreds of years old due to drugs

Wow, that sounds like a great deal, no way it ends up being fucking nightmarish

Bald as an egg, wrinkled as a prune and as mean as a bear with hemorrhoids

Can you go awol in the past?

An army of short dudes

Wow he's spending a lot of time on logistical details I can't even begin to give a shit about

Uh, oh

Oh, yeah, it's the height that's going to give them away. Not their inability to speak the language.

If you read a time travel book and think "but people on average were shorter how will they answer that" you suck and I hate you

Oh, no

Hmmmmm

I just, what? So they compete in the past instead of warring in the present. Directly interfering. But then fix the collateral damage?

They got the government tracking chips

Why not fight in the far future? Or VR?

Why not rip off robot jox?

This is LARP ULTIMATE TOURNAMENT

It would be way more fun

How does this industry profit. Oh man I am all questions

That's what I keep asking!

I refuse to believe no one could figure out how to disapear into another time period. Every new phone that comes out gets jailbroken before it even hits the shelves

Also it would make for a more interesting story

How many times can you steal diamonds from the past before De Beers doesn't have any

A ref has gone rogue

Oh, cool actual plot

Also what?

It's not even loot, I want to know how this "wartime economy" causes "prosperity"

The joke is we all live better than an English king from back then

This has to be simons fantasy

Oh, boy, sure seems like travelling back to the past to kill people is a dumb fucking idea!

North of England in October, no heating, all food is boiled or roasted. Hmm.

How has nothing like this happened before? Has no one tried?

Haha, I shall change the course of a mediocre period of dull history. Go turn Africa into a technological Superpower before colonialism

So, the plan is to kill that guy and replace him with this ref. Then this ref will follow history and let himself get killed

Ok. Or.....just go a bit further back

Okay, they have anti-aging drugs, and time travel technology, but they can't fake a fucking corpse?

This feels like about the point I'd crumple up the draft and decide not to finish this one

Robin Hood fan fiction

Heart of Darkness, in tiiiiiiiiiime

What are the tanks?

Cryo tanks

They're keeping these four on ice and replacing them with these bozos

I guess you can't give someone a scar with plastic surgery

All this set up to write about robin hood

They are taking actual robin hood out of the timeline with their shit?

Why not just write about robin hood?

I don't know enough about Robin Hood to understand why this is supposed to be significant

That's involves far too few ideas

Main character of the historical novel ivanhoe

Can they go back in time to a point where all of this made sense?

They interrogated the merry men

So all these fictional characters were real?

I guess. He eventually meets Dracula

But that's five books from now

Wow

Wild these got published

Like, vampire Dracula, or the dude he was based on?

I don't think the author understands the difference

Ivanhoe was written in like the industrial age or something

Hawke didn't do anything super creative with the ability to write about literally any period in history being fucked with

He eventually does in his latest series

Nysteel is back, baby

Hahahaha he loves the nysteel

It's his signature

Im just do confused about all of this

Every decision made so far feels like a bad one

He meets Bram Stoker, Dracula, Sherlock Holmes, and Author Conan Doyle in that book

Wait what who. Is Lucas returning to England with a suit of armour made of Nysteel, pretending to be Robin Hood?

That is a literary crime.

Wait the fuck?

You know it's good to read something like this, which is actually incomprehensible, then go read something you've been struggling to finish.

So they have modern tech in ancient times and time travel. So there are no stakes from this point onwards.

I feel like he packs five paragraphs of exposition into ever two paragraphs somehow

Why is it suddenly a problem that they killed a guy, when it wasn't a problem when they killed millions of guys?

And all of it is on the logistics of time travel

Which is boring and dumb

You take that back.

I'm skipping over a whole lot of historic and folklore summary. Hopefully it's not important

12th century crusades. I wonder what Hawkes take on that is.

Isn't that just the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen?

Bobby, who is Robin Hood, has gotten involved in an archery tournament. I guess to prove that he is Robin Hood. Anyway, magic science arrow

Wait is he cheating. Fuck him.

Seems legit

Of course he's cheating, how the hell is he supposed to live up to a legendary archer otherwise

You don't want the people in the past to get your magnetic arrow

Practice?

They could have avoided that situation by giving him 2 magnet arrows.

When?

Anywhen!

This is *a time travel story

Yeah, but he ages in real time, and the rules are not clear at all

Also, who gives a shit? It's TimeWars, not a gentleman's competition.

My inner child objects to robin hood being dumped in a tank and replaced by a cheating imposter

You've got the technology, so use it

I guarantee it isnt

I understand that, but you can just concentrate on any of the other terribly stupid and wrong details.

Sonic burst implies a sound. Wouldn't that be noticeable?

No, it was like this:

Are we supposed to be rooting for this guy?

"Oh no, I have lost my ridiculous advantage, now I only have my super armour"

You're losing track of renegate ref they have to bring in, or else he'll fuck up all of history.

Despite the fact that they've been fucking up history systematically for a living for quite some time

Yeah but they could just go back to wednesday and not let him into the time machine.

Look, there are a lot of things they could do

The best thing would be to not do any of this TimeWars stuff

I'm really becoming attached to this group of unlikable fuckups.

So they put a future sonic device in the lance, but still made it out of wood

I am willing to accept the best way to resolve modern global conflict is time LARPING.

Why not nysteel?

Is he just using the word sonic because he remembered it from a doctor who episode he saw once?

Atomic Lance.

So like, has anyone written about using time travel to vacation. Like a time travel agency?

I'm pretty sure there's been short stories I've read in anthologies

There would definitely be time travel sex tourism

I half-skimmed and caught up and I'm really disappointed that with the best future cheat Hawke could think of for an arrow is a button activated magnet

Not in middle ages England. Unless it's a fetish.

There was a bad movie called "A Sound of Thunder"

It's based on a short story

I think that was Ray Bradbury, wasn't it?

But like, I'm talking one where shit doesn't go catastrophically wrong

I don't need this level of self-aware humor. You have not earned it

This tournament is unending

No, they found a more strenuous way.

They found a shittier way to wage war

"We still do this in the future, only now sometimes people get lost for eternity in the Puke Dimension."

This Lucas Priest is a real nice guy

Just a living hell

This guy has never read a book or an episode of a show without somehow getting 6 books out of it.

Hmmm

Do you guys feel like Simon Hawke has issues with women?

So he still uses that word in his internal monologue, huh?

Jewess (n) - a term used exclusively by antisemites

I don't think he's probably an active anti semite from that. He may just have had a sheltered upbringing. God I hope.

Do we do that for other religions? Hinduess.

Multiple twists. The second best knight is a lady and has future armor

Boob massage in front of your little brother. Ok.

One page ago, Hawke said she looked boyish. There are probably a dozen other adjectives that would be a better prelude to this reveal.

This is the kind of book I read as a kid and couldn't give a shit who was who.

I had to read this a couple times to be sure that the red knight and de la Croix are the same person.

That's what I'm experiencing. The scene is described as though it holds three characters.

Apparently Robin Hood is a drunk and Maid Marion's manwhore

More than all the other problems with this book, I'm most bothered he chose to spell it Marion and not "Marian".

This Finn Delaney guy seems to have a bad grasp on the time travel thing

Oh fuck it all then.

Just fucking airstrike him.

Fuck you Hawke I hate you.

Shit, I forgot we're pretending these fictional characters are real.

In a classic sitcom mishap, the lady pretending to be a man has caught the eye of another lady

OK, maybe more aggressive than that

Contrived to procure. The best words Simon Hawke ever wrote down together.

Whoa.

Another scene with 2 characters that sounds like there are 10.

Also, yikes.

I'm going to play hard to get more often.

Goat Spores

Who wants to bet Hawke thinks a lady can't rape a man?

Goat spores?

Somebody say rape?

nobody said rape

We only expressed disgust for it.

As an imperitive, I mean.

So gross. You can rape the girl, but not the boy. Creep.

Hawke does this thing where nothing happens for a long time and then starts rapid firing off story

Hawkes sexual harm preoccupation is genuinely disturbing.

Classic weird descriptions from Hawke

Hawke has never spoken to a woman, much less had sex with one.

She's working for that rogue ref

And stop calling her boyish. Your description was closer to "mannish", but that's gross so don't say that either.

Do you feel that he writes like he thinks a more manly man will judge him? Like maybe his dad threw his stories out as a kid, "Forget these silly things Simon we're Brick knockers son"

It does make sense as overcompensation or being closeted. I'd feel bad making fun if it's the latter.

Maybe years later they found closure. On his father's deathbed

"Ah Simon, it were I that were wrong, for where I see beauty in a knocked brick you have it in your clever words. Oh my Simon. That'll do"

"Sorry son. But seriously, why was Steele absent for most of his own books?"

So we're back to this stupid tournament. May I present electric sword

And horse fart

Fucking cheater. I'm on the villains side.

half an amp isn't, like, a huge amount.

Half an amp is almost certainly fatal.

"Ah Simon I must ask, what does a barely 16 years old 20 year old look like son? Simon get out your sisters room mate"

https://www.asc.ohio-state.edu/physics/p616/safety/fatal_current.html

This is some Hardy Boys-esque denial of danger

"What was with the human dick thing? I told you I was sorry about the accident at the zoo when you were a kid."

"Above 200 milliamps, the muscular contractions are so severe that the heart is forcibly clamped during the shock. This clamping protects the heart from going into ventricular fibrillation, and the victim's chances for survival are good."

He actually made it too high.

Shit, my bad. I remembered wrong and only half read my source.

Oh that's such a great time travel move. I am all in with the villain. Did we know what his motivation is?

Either way, this is a time sword. It should be like, a gigawatt.

I didn't mean it when I said you could never be a real man Simon.

He wants to be the King of England

Oh, I thought that was like step 2 of 7

I'm being treated to a long ass logistical discussion about time travel

If one dude can fuck up the timeline so bad, how can they ignore the thousands/millions of time soldiers?

I give up trying to make sense of this.

Boy do I hate it

Am I mad or do modern books have larger spaces in-between paragraphs.

That looks scrunched up like a crazy person's notebook

Seems like all this time travel stuff is more trouble than it's worth.

Depends on the book. This looks like some of my cheaper books that try to use as few pages as possible to reduce costs,

Time travel has been invented many times. In every timeline it has been, the very next act after invention, is a weary person popping into existence to kill the inventor burn their research and fade away.

I know that was the exact plot of an episode of the X-Files.

Here's Marion. All women need to be young

This is weird

Lucas got attacked by the lady knight and now he's being taken care of by some old hippie

Future hippy

I call bullshit. No one would choose to live in the 12th century and give up every amenity.

He has a time machine

Which implies that he has a way to generate electricity

Now we're talking.

You wanted to know Irving's motivation? He's trying to prove a theory

Shouldn't they already know the answer? That first referee's job was to die as King Richard.

This is the sort of thing you should figure out before you send LARPers back in time.

This is a brilliant idea. If, like, birds and weather didn't exist

Thankfully Earth, the sun, and galaxies are stationary in space, right guys?

Apparently there's no room in the budget to give everyone a jet pack.

See all of this proves my point from way earlier, he keeps trying to get real inepth with how time travel would work but ends up creating more plot holes

And why don't they just skip a step and give the soldiers those floater packs?

If he just didn't bring it up I wouldn't either because like, who cares it's a story? But since he has brought it up I must now actually care

This deserter's story only works if we hadn't already met the merry men

The army implants follow coconut on the head rules

Has hawke ever written a love interest old enough to drink?

Raven was 22

I thought she was 18 when they first met?

The time army doesn't know how time travel works and all their equipment immediately breaks. This army sucks.

No, she was a teenage prostitute for many years

This future hippy is wild

No, he bizarrely described her as a 22 year old with the face of a 16 year old and an 18 year old's body or some shit.

Ok yeah, definitely way better then

These future guys decided that hygiene is the most important part of training. Also the last sentence is something else

To be fair, I would do that in the middle ages too.

I mean, not the moderating my drinking part, obviously.

Turns out that kid who was time travel garroted did it to himself to prevent being tortured and interrogated by Irving

Seems like there are better ways to commit suicide

This dude is fucking crazy

These guys are fight by time traveling back and forth. One has a Tommy gun, and the other a sword. This does not work in text

This isn't going to fuck with time at all, no siree

The bad guy dies on accident. He pulls back the lady knight as she's trying to kill a knight and she kills Irving instead

So far the plot of this book is that unlikable, incompetent people with shitty equipment fuck up history and then fail to fix their own fuckups.

After that they go home and Lucas becomes a Time Commando. The last two chapters are devoted to the lady knight killing the knight who killed her brother. She also saves the Jewish woman from the beginning.

She's hanging out with the old crazy future hippy

I had assumed Simon Hawke had forgotten about her.

At least she has a name.

She showed up every once in a while, she got kidnapped by some knights. But she didn't really do anything

She keeps getting called a healer, but she never healed anybody

Maybe she just made them get rid of their pubic lice, too.

The epilogue is literally just about Lucas recruiting people at a recruitment center

Our hero, perpetuating the horror.

Anyway, that was pretty boring. Don't know how there are 12 of these

This is the only good part of the book

The more he worldbuilds, the less the world makes sense.

Anyway, one more book down. Onto the next adventure

ALL HAIL STEELETRON

The worst part is that, despite all the explanations, the book never really explains how or why the world agreed to this form of combat

Hannibal was NOT a berserker general, Hawke, you HAVE to know this.

Minimal lip action. Not ideal!

Well, turns out simon hawke got better as a writer

Not good but better

12: Time Wars #1: The Ivanhoe Gambit Simon Hawke

First in the new time travel adventure series!

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