Codename: Athena

Time Patrol Nancy Laplante #1

by Michel Poulin

This is the first book in the series on the adventures through time of Nancy Laplante, a Canadian war correspondent and reserve military intelligence officer from 2012. Coming back from her latest work assignment in Afghanistan, Nancy is hoping to be able to take some well-earned vacation time at her lakeside cottage in the Laurentians. She is however abducted and taken back in time, where she finds herself marooned in the past. She will then have to find a way back home, on top of having to survive a brutal war.

Genres: Time Travel, Science Fiction

660 pages, ebook

First published June 13, 2012

About the author

I retired from the Canadian Forces in 2006 after serving 32 years. I am married, with two grown sons, and live in Boucherville, on the South Shore of Montreal. My native language is French and I am fluent in English, plus speak a limited Spanish. I read a lot, mostly about history, military affairs and technology, air and space events and World news. My hobbies are writing and reading. I write strictly as a hobby, not to make money, and offer my books free online.
While PDF versions of my 17 first ebooks are available online on Goodreads.com, you will find other versions online on Free-Ebooks.net. Please note that Goodreads does not allow anymore to make PDF copies of new ebooks available from my author site. If you are interested in my newer ebooks and don't find links for them on Goodreads, please send me a message via GR and I will be happy to send either a PDF, Kindle or Epub copy of my book(s) by email.

Reviews

[Ed Cifelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was intrigued by the title of the book and started to read it. I found myself absorbed in the story. Being 74 y o I have started to read ebooks more and as a way of passing time. I found I couldn't put this book down. I actually stayed up late a couple of nights to be able to finish it in less that 4 days. I cannot express the words needed to say how much this books grabbed me. I will also definitely be telling friends about it.

[Travis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once again, I find myself in a poor position. This book was an excellent one. The problem is, this was supposedly a corrected edition, and yet, there were more errors in every single chapter than I see in entire books on a regular basis. The best one that actually made me laugh was the word planification.
Seriously, I like this author's work, but the shear number of errors is incredible. I even had to give up and edit the files at one point, just to remove some seriously irritating errors, just so I could read the damned thing.
I strongly believe that if the author can get a decent (it doesn't even have to be a good one, just a decent) editor to go over this book, and fix as many of the verbiage problems, and the wrong verb tenses, as possible, this would be a book deserving of a science fiction award. It's an excellent story, it's just been translated extremely poorly.
I can't imagine there are too many scifi fans that wouldn't enjoy this one if it was cleaned up and presented in a proper manner. Time travel is one of the mainstays of science fiction, and the story behind this one is really really good (well, until it crossed over into the metaphysical anyway towards the end), and it's hard to find a really good time travel story that doesn't short itself on one or another time period during the telling, though I think this one does an admirable job of doing just that. There are several more in the series, and I suppose I'll give them a look, but no matter how much I enjoy these tales, if the editing is as poorly done on the others as this first one was, I'm not sure if I'll have the patience to read them all.

[Tony Calder · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michel Poulin is Canadian and his native language is French. He claims to be fluent in English as well, but that's not really true - he writes in English with French grammar. Sentence structure in French is different to English - verb placement is different, and often the tense is slightly different. For me, this made the book harder to read than it should have been, and the book really needs a good editor, which I understand is not likely to happen as Poulin self-publishes and releases his books for free.

This is another tale of modern technology being introduced into World War II, which has certainly been done before, but Poulin provides a much more limited exposure than either Harry Turtledove or John Birmingham did in their books. Codename: Athena is generally well-written, and pretty easy to read (grammatical problems aside), but the characters aren't very nuanced, although they're not two-dimensional.

This is the first book in a seven-book series, but I haven't decided if my interest in time-travel / alternate history (a genre I usually enjoy) will overcome the irritation I know I will feel due to the translation issues.

[Steen Christensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love time travel books.. and i like this one.

Nancy Laplante. war reporter and reserver officer in the Canadian army, is against her will, sendt back to England in 1940. Realising she has no way back, she don't keep her origins secret, and starts helping shorten the war

[Seth Kinkaid · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the first seven books in series thought they were fantastic didn't know there more books in series I had some time off thought i go back and series I haven't looked at in 10 years this was one of my favorites I only wish I could buy them on Amazon or somewhere else to download on my kindle

[Jo Depreitere · Rating 5 out of 5]

*Slight spoilers ahead*
The main part of the book takes place at the beginning of the second world war. A female reservist of the Canadian army of 2012 is stranded in time and decides to help the British in order to shorten the war and to reduce the number of casualties. As I am a big fan of stories with a high "what if" factor and the WWII era interests me a lot, a book with this premisse can't go wrong with me. The introduction of and the reaction to modern technology in the WWII era is fascinating to read and makes it hard to put the book down. At the end, the book takes a more fantasy kind of turn and brings us to the far future, as the set-up for the rest of the series. I'm not sure where this will lead, but I'm dying to find out...

[Jason Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the best Sci-Fi books I have read and I strongly recommend it. I have read this book twice, once about 2 years ago and again recently. It is essentially a historical fiction based during the Second World war, mostly in Britain. Reading it a third time in 2025, I still love it and most of the books in the series. Yes the English has many mistakes, but as someone said, it is much better than my French. The book is quite understandable despite minor grammatical errors on every 5th page or so. The plot is well thought out, consistent, and captivating. It is factual enough to give readers more insight into WW2 politics behind the scenes.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absorbing book - particularly interesting mix of time travel of the main character Nancy Laplante mainly in the early part of WW2, the present and the future in 3300+ CE. Very readable with a good and interesting plot, well worth reading.

[Tom · Rating 2 out of 5]

At times it seemed like the writings of an adolescent. Couldn't finish it.

[Mike Morgan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent, vivid characters, good plot

[Frederick Jamieson]

Well written characters storyline very concise have recommended to my friends.