Though conceptually I was looking forward to this, it didn't really work for me. Mainly I think it's a language problem - Cook's dialectal efforts just don't really hold water, not when you've enjoyed Dave Duncan's Past imperative or David Walton's Quintessence. The behaviour also felt a little off: William was your typical good-in-a-fight but drinks and is a troublemaker, Nathan just seemd very easily lead but with some attempted flavourings of 20th century honour and Clara just got angry at men things. Then there is the typical time travel trope of hearing something but it being too subtle to identify or worry about and it later proving to be you all along - that's par for the course these days - as is a second shady travelling figure who's out to thwart our heroic do-gooders from completing their mission.

it felt like this book borrowed from plenty of other time travel stories without adding much original. No explanation is given as to why things are set during the Great War, and the differences in technology between that era and the book's future are massive, without needing to add alien intelligences into the mix. Read to complete, but did consider at several points just putting it down. oh and the typos - calvary! It's like solider, you can't escape it. And the other interesting one was "a little courtesy", not a curtsey.