Angels on Crusade by Jennifer Macaire is not part of the continuing Iskander series but does have some connections...the connections being the method of time travel used.  But that is where the similarities end.

Isobel is a prisoner in the distant future.  After killing a child who she hit with her car she was tried for her crime whilst unconscious.  They waited until she awoke before declaring her sentence of life imprisonment. 

After ten years in a reproduction prison Isobel is offered a deal. 

Readers of the Iskander series will know already that if the past is altered when someone travels in time then the person who went back in time will be erased from existence when their error which altered time is erased.  But that is a very expensive process and Isobel is sent on a mission that is a last chance to repair the damage done by a time travelling interviewer before the altered history is erased.

In Angels on Crusade the reader gets to see just how the people of the future can tell that the past has altered.  In this case an interviewer who had gone back in time had asked a question of the Queen Marguerite about the eighth crusade.  Neither the queen or the interviewer had noticed her young son Jean de Dampierre listening to the conversation.  He should never have known about the crusade and instead history has been altered and he not only knows about the crusade, he decides to join it and does not return.  His early death causes a problem because it was through his line that the Crown of France eventually passed.

Isobel's mission is to go back in time, find Jean and stop him from going on the crusade.  If she succeeds she can remain in the thirteenth century for the rest of her life.  If she fails she will be erased.

Isobel soon finds Jean but finds that her mission is not as easy as it once appeared.  The docile young man who should return home after hearing of his mother's distress is nowhere in sight.  Instead he refuses to return home and is determined to go on the crusade no matter what Isobel says.

And so Isobel finds herself following the crusaders, together with Charles, a young streetwise boy who she befriends.

Her adventure takes her across the seas to the Holy Land where she is must try to alter history and save the hot-headed young man who is falling in love with her.  She must also face her own demons and learn to be around people again. 

This book is set in a time period that I have never read before and it made a very refreshing change from the usual time travel novels. 

This novel also managed to surprise me which is a rare thing indeed.  At around the 100 page mark I had to go back over several paragraphs and read them again it shocked me that much.  No I won't spoil the plot here but prepare to be surprised.

The story of Isobel and her mission to the past is well told and engaging and if you like the Iskander series you will almost certainly enjoy this book too.

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Also by Jennifer Macaire: The Iskander Series

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