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The Clouds of Caelus
The Advantage is Gone
With trenches behind them and the doorway to the east ahead, victory seemed a matter of time, until the Easterners introduced their own technological poison gas. The new weapon throws the Western Alliance's lines into chaos, causing the first major retreat since the war began. Behind the lines, new allies and new unrest increase the uncertainty as diplomacy and espionage threaten to open new fronts at the worst possible moment. Now Ky and Lucilla must race to come up with a counter for these new threats before all is lost.
With trenches behind them and the doorway to the east ahead, victory seemed a matter of time, until the Easterners introduced their own technological poison gas. The new weapon throws the Western Alliance's lines into chaos, causing the first major retreat since the war began. Behind the lines, new allies and new unrest increase the uncertainty as diplomacy and espionage threaten to open new fronts at the worst possible moment. Now Ky and Lucilla must race to come up with a counter for these new threats before all is lost.
- GenresTime Travel
542 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 1, 2025
32 people are currently reading
8 people want to read
About the author
Travis Starnes
42 books89 followersTravis writes science fiction, fantasy, and thriller novels (and the occasional coming-of-age story), with the hope of transporting and enthralling readers. Publishing novels since 2015, Travis’s passion is creating worlds and characters that live and breathe, and experiencing the joy of those stories with his readers.
When not writing, Travis enjoys connecting with readers and other writers, managing the popular Complete Marvel Reading Order website, where he works on his other passion for comics and graphic novels, and spending time with his family.
When not writing, Travis enjoys connecting with readers and other writers, managing the popular Complete Marvel Reading Order website, where he works on his other passion for comics and graphic novels, and spending time with his family.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 23, 2025
I haven't really reviewed this series much, which is a shame, since it's been pretty steady in terms of quality. It reminds me somewhat of Dirk van den Boom's Emperor's Men (alternate Roman Empire due to time travel shenanigans) crossed with Weber's Safehold series (person from the future arrives in primitive world and attempts to improve things while dealing with insidious complications). It tends to focus a lot more on the nitty-gritty of the process of industrialization and technological progress (not just, here's an airplane, BUILD IT! but here's the raw materials we need to get, here's the techniques we need to get those raw materials, here's the processes we need to refine those raw materials, here's the processes we need to refine the refined materials into more refined materials, etc.) and Starnes does a good job of throwing the protagonists for loops with unexpected counter-developments and the general frustrating tendency of people to be short-sighted. Early on in the series he also had an intriguing tension between the fact that our main protagonist was from a far-advanced highly cultured post-scarcity society but that for all of its hygiene and opportunities for self-realization, it is also rather cold and dehumanizing, but Starnes pretty much jettisoned that plot line half a dozen books ago. One of the more interesting wrinkles Starnes has made to the basic "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" plotline is the idea that while our protagonist is changing history... there are other forces at work also changing history with outside knowledge (and, in fact, were changing history before he arrived). I've seen some people criticize this, on the grounds that it doesn't make sense on the ground that Ky's arrival is the divergence point and the butterfly effect should spread out from there, which, frankly I'm amazed by as Starnes has given us some pretty obvious clues as to what's really going on.
Anyway, in terms of the story of this particular volume, after finally pushing back the Eastern Empire's advance into Europe, the Alliance of the Britannic Romans and their various continental allies seem to have the edge thanks to their increasingly sophisticated weaponry, including simple bolt-action rifles and riverine ironclads, but... the Eastern Empire is vast and has enormous pools of resources and while the Western powers may by advancing at a rate it cannot match, the Easterners know that there is more than one way to change the dynamic of combat: If you can't fight on even terms, then change the terms entirely, regardless of the human cost. At the same time that the Alliance and the Empire fight for control of Greece and Sarmatia (aka modern day Belarus/Ukraine), the situation in Africa remains unstable as the treacherous Ptolemaic regime and the Alliance remain locked in a bitter fight for control while in Carthage, the Allied occupation force faces a growing insurrection. Likewise, the Scandinavians, an unenthusiastic member of the Alliance, seem to be having second thoughts with a charismatic and wealthy young noble pushing for them to leave the Alliance and avoid the "threat" of Britannic hegemony. Elsewhere, Alliance intelligence has discovered the existence of an underground movement within the Eastern Empire and puts forward a plan to make contact and support them, hoping to spark a revolution within the Empire and avoid a long grinding war across Eurasia.
While I will say the character writing is... good not great (better than Dirk van den Boom but not as good as Taylor Anderson or David Weber, similar to Eric Flint, if less amusing) and subplots tend to reach a climax and then abruptly resolve themselves rather anticlimactically, my biggest problem with this series is geographic. I don't know if it's an auto-correct issue or an editing issue but these books are just so full of geographic errors. The most common one is that the books often switch Sarmatia (as noted before, the vast inland plains of Belarus/Ukraine/western Russia) and Sardinia (the island south of Corsica and north of Sicily in the western Mediterranean), which is particularly problematic since there are plotlines in the series set in both places. Likewise, the author makes frequent references to the Horn of Africa (more in previous books than this book) when he clearly is referring to the southernmost part of Africa (aka the Cape of Good Hope or Cape of Storms in South Africa, whereas the real Horn of Africa is the easternmost portion of the continent, mostly made up of Somalia and Ethiopia), possibly confusing it with Cape Horn, the southernmost part of South America. It's times like these when I must remind all authors that there is no such thing as a book where a map is not a good idea. It forces you to think about where things really are and (in a case like this) compare them directly to the real world and put everything before your readers in black and white. Then, even if you get something wrong, at least your readers can look at the map (as long as its accurate to your story) and know what you really mean. I know a lot of readers (given the sad and continual failure of generation after generation to embrace the joys and wonders of geography) hear "Horn of Africa" and have no clue where it is and can accept that it might as well be the southernmost point of Africa as the easternmost (or possibly somewhere on the moon), but as someone who's had a fairly detailed idea of the shape of the world in my head since I was quite young (I REALLY loved atlases when I was a kid), it's like nails on chalkboard reading such obvious mistakes.
Apart from that frustration, I continue to find this series to be a fun and intriguing take on the basic "people/person stranded in time/space have to rebuild civilization from scratch" formula. I like the detail Starnes puts into the complexities (and dangers) of the technical side of going from iron age to industrial age and generally I like the characters (though I will say it's a bit strange how much Ky and his AI sidekick have fallen out of the story, having gone from central protagonists to more-or-less supporting characters in the last couple books) and apart from the cycle of supposed allies stabbing our heroes in the back because they're too stupid to realize they're making themselves fodder for the Imperial war machine, I find the story to be engaging and entertaining with a fine sense of the dramatic, and I eagerly look forward to the next volume.
Anyway, in terms of the story of this particular volume, after finally pushing back the Eastern Empire's advance into Europe, the Alliance of the Britannic Romans and their various continental allies seem to have the edge thanks to their increasingly sophisticated weaponry, including simple bolt-action rifles and riverine ironclads, but... the Eastern Empire is vast and has enormous pools of resources and while the Western powers may by advancing at a rate it cannot match, the Easterners know that there is more than one way to change the dynamic of combat: If you can't fight on even terms, then change the terms entirely, regardless of the human cost. At the same time that the Alliance and the Empire fight for control of Greece and Sarmatia (aka modern day Belarus/Ukraine), the situation in Africa remains unstable as the treacherous Ptolemaic regime and the Alliance remain locked in a bitter fight for control while in Carthage, the Allied occupation force faces a growing insurrection. Likewise, the Scandinavians, an unenthusiastic member of the Alliance, seem to be having second thoughts with a charismatic and wealthy young noble pushing for them to leave the Alliance and avoid the "threat" of Britannic hegemony. Elsewhere, Alliance intelligence has discovered the existence of an underground movement within the Eastern Empire and puts forward a plan to make contact and support them, hoping to spark a revolution within the Empire and avoid a long grinding war across Eurasia.
While I will say the character writing is... good not great (better than Dirk van den Boom but not as good as Taylor Anderson or David Weber, similar to Eric Flint, if less amusing) and subplots tend to reach a climax and then abruptly resolve themselves rather anticlimactically, my biggest problem with this series is geographic. I don't know if it's an auto-correct issue or an editing issue but these books are just so full of geographic errors. The most common one is that the books often switch Sarmatia (as noted before, the vast inland plains of Belarus/Ukraine/western Russia) and Sardinia (the island south of Corsica and north of Sicily in the western Mediterranean), which is particularly problematic since there are plotlines in the series set in both places. Likewise, the author makes frequent references to the Horn of Africa (more in previous books than this book) when he clearly is referring to the southernmost part of Africa (aka the Cape of Good Hope or Cape of Storms in South Africa, whereas the real Horn of Africa is the easternmost portion of the continent, mostly made up of Somalia and Ethiopia), possibly confusing it with Cape Horn, the southernmost part of South America. It's times like these when I must remind all authors that there is no such thing as a book where a map is not a good idea. It forces you to think about where things really are and (in a case like this) compare them directly to the real world and put everything before your readers in black and white. Then, even if you get something wrong, at least your readers can look at the map (as long as its accurate to your story) and know what you really mean. I know a lot of readers (given the sad and continual failure of generation after generation to embrace the joys and wonders of geography) hear "Horn of Africa" and have no clue where it is and can accept that it might as well be the southernmost point of Africa as the easternmost (or possibly somewhere on the moon), but as someone who's had a fairly detailed idea of the shape of the world in my head since I was quite young (I REALLY loved atlases when I was a kid), it's like nails on chalkboard reading such obvious mistakes.
Apart from that frustration, I continue to find this series to be a fun and intriguing take on the basic "people/person stranded in time/space have to rebuild civilization from scratch" formula. I like the detail Starnes puts into the complexities (and dangers) of the technical side of going from iron age to industrial age and generally I like the characters (though I will say it's a bit strange how much Ky and his AI sidekick have fallen out of the story, having gone from central protagonists to more-or-less supporting characters in the last couple books) and apart from the cycle of supposed allies stabbing our heroes in the back because they're too stupid to realize they're making themselves fodder for the Imperial war machine, I find the story to be engaging and entertaining with a fine sense of the dramatic, and I eagerly look forward to the next volume.
November 9, 2025
Very entertaining
Very well written continuation of the alternate history series. The futuristic supersoldier accidentally thrown into an alternate antiquity continues the military and political fight to create a western style civilization in a world dominated by brutal autocracies. Lots of action.
Very well written continuation of the alternate history series. The futuristic supersoldier accidentally thrown into an alternate antiquity continues the military and political fight to create a western style civilization in a world dominated by brutal autocracies. Lots of action.
November 5, 2025
The saga continues
Have enjoyed the series so far the story telling is good and readable, this chapter follows the progress of the empires ups and downs against the eastern invaders and I cannot wait untill the book,
Have enjoyed the series so far the story telling is good and readable, this chapter follows the progress of the empires ups and downs against the eastern invaders and I cannot wait untill the book,
November 5, 2025
NOT LONG ENOUGH!!!
Starnes did good with this one, only downside is that it wasn't long enough. Cannot wait for the next one! Cheers!
Starnes did good with this one, only downside is that it wasn't long enough. Cannot wait for the next one! Cheers!
December 7, 2025
Addictive Reading
Imagine the industrial revolution on fast forward taking place during a world war. That's what makes this such a fascinating read.
Imagine the industrial revolution on fast forward taking place during a world war. That's what makes this such a fascinating read.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews