You can check out my main entries for the book bingo here and the rest of my bonus reads here.
Title: Time Riders/Day of the Predator/The Doomsday Code/The Eternal War/Gates of Rome
Author: Alex Scarrow
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Liam O’Connor should have died when the Titanic sank in 1912. Maddy Carter should have died in a plane crash in 2010. Sal Vikram should have died in a tragic fire in 2026. But all three have been given a second chance – to work for a secretive agency that monitors history for any changes, large or small. Its purpose? To prevent time travel destroying everything.
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When Kramer, a brilliant physicist from the future, attempts to alter history and lead Nazi Germany to victory over the Allied Forces, a time wave arrives at the team’s home base in 2001. Liam and support unit Bob must travel back in time and correct events, while Maddy and Sal cope with the terrifying new reality the present has become. Can the new team successfully save the world from utter destruction?
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When Maddy mistakenly opens a time window where and when she shouldn't have, Liam and new support unit Becks are marooned sixty-five million years ago in the hunting ground of a deadly -and as-yet-undiscovered – species of predator. Can Liam make contact with Maddy and Sal before he's torn to pieces by dinosaurs – and without endangering history so much that the world is overtaken by a terrifying new reality?
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When a British hacker finds his name in a coded manuscript that is almost one thousand years old, he tracks Maddy down to 2001 and confronts the team. Liam, Bob, and Becks travel back to Sherwood Forest in 1193 to discover the message’s origins. But between a strange hooded man attempting to do the same and a revolution which could change history as they know it, can they put things right and find out what’s really going on?
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When the team intervenes to fix the premature death of Abraham Lincoln, he follows them back to 2001, causing the world to enter a dangerous state of limbo. If the TimeRiders can't return Lincoln to the past where he belongs, the American Civil War will never end. Can Maddy persuade the two colonels on either side of no man's land to cease fire long enough to save the future?
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Project Exodus – a mission to transport select people from a ruined future to the height of the Roman Empire – has gone catastrophically wrong, resulting in a future that has dramatically changed. Liam and Bob go to investigate, but when Maddy and Sal attempt to flee a kill-squad sent to hunt down their field office, the whole team is trapped in the past. With the office unmanned – and under threat – how will the TimeRiders make it back to 2001 and put history right?
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It’s not exactly a secret that I’m not the biggest lover of most science fiction – I’m much more of a fantasy girlie (gn) at heart – and despite my enduring love for Torchwood and the Sarah Jane Adventures, time travel stories have always been a sticking point for me. The first few of these are actually some of the only sci-fi books that I enjoyed as a child (although I never actually finished the series back then) and while they’re by no means bad, it’s pretty clear that I’m not the target audience for them.
Every time I’ve sat down with one of these books, I’ve found myself really struggling to suspend my disbelief and get lost in the story in the same way that I can with fantasy. For example, I can absolutely acknowledge that the Nazis winning WWII or some dinosaurs surviving the ELE would result in huge changes to the modern day as we know it, but I can’t quite make myself believe the same of Abraham Lincoln dying young or a peasant uprising in 12th century England.
Having said that, the rippling consequences of the changes that the author makes in each book are quite interesting – my favourite of them so far was definitely the one where New York City in 2001 ended up being French! – and the little hints that have been given so far about the ‘future’ (although one of the characters, Sal, is actually from this year!) have apparently been leading to an overarching background plot that I’d completely forgotten about, so maybe I’ll enjoy the later books more now that that’s kicked into high gear.
Content warnings for animal death, body horror, cancer (mentioned only), cannibalism, child abuse, child death (implied only), classism, colonisation (mentioned only), confinement, emotional abuse, fire, genocide (mentioned only), gore, grief, gun violence, kidnapping, mental illness, murder, omnicide (mentioned only), pandemic (mentioned only), panic attacks, psychosis, racism, slavery, stalking, suicidal thoughts, suicide, terminal illness (mentioned only), torture, violence, and war.
The Doomsday Code by Alex Scarrow _____________________________ _____________________________ Rating: 4/5 Stars Series: TimeRiders, #3 Length: 438 Pages Purchase: [Amazon] | [Barnes & Noble] Sy…
And here’s another review for the TimeRiders series. As I keep trying to get myself to read it, I refuse to stop reading the series. Here’s to the next book!
