This is one of those books in which a modern man is suddenly transported into the past, and manages to make something of himself by exploiting all the things he knows that the people around him don’t. There’s a whole family of such books, going back to [b:A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur|13793031|A Yankee at the Court of King Arthur|Mark Twain|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1337245571l/13793031._SY75_.jpg|2621763], and in general I like them if they’re done well.

The hero, Conrad, is a Polish engineer unexpectedly transported back to Poland in the year 1231 AD. The Polish language has been stable for a long time, so he doesn’t need to relearn it; and, being an engineer, he knows some useful things. But he also knows that the Mongols are going to invade in ten years and kill everyone; so he has a strong motivation to try to do something about that.

It’s a good scenario, and Frankowski depicts Poland in 1231 quite plausibly. Initially Conrad spends most of his time and energy trying to industrialize Poland, which involves a variety of engineering projects but also social and business innovations. He gains some initial capital in various ways, and builds up a profit from his innovative activities. He’s fortunate to gain the support of a few members of the aristocracy (although others are suspicious or hostile).

In his spare time, he likes to have sex daily, and preferably with a variety of different women (marriage doesn’t attract him). He finds that the age of consent in that time and place seems to be 14, and takes full advantage of that. He has only consensual sex, and in his own way he treats women kindly and considerately; but he’s promiscuous by inclination, and women seem to find him attractive.

The whole story seems to be the author’s wish-fulfillment fantasy, fully worked out and written down in detail. Although Conrad does encounter problems and setbacks now and then.

Overall, I find the story mildly entertaining in places and mildly tedious in other places. I’m no engineer, so the engineering projects are much more interesting to the author than to me. Conrad’s sexual activities (which are not described in intimate detail) are presumably enjoyable for him, but do nothing for me. The social interactions and his project of gradually upgrading the whole country are of some interest.

This book is the first part of a series (there are sequels), so it ends at an intermission point rather than a true dramatic finish. You can decide whether you want more; some will, some won’t.

It’s probably suitable only for people who normally read sf, and not for a general audience. ( )

I bet the author was a short, unattractive geek. And possibly a pedophile. I bet you half my house.

The protagonist, an engineer who finds himself in the past, is tall and perfect and the (mostly 14 year old) ladies are throwing themselves at him. Like David Brin's [b:The Practice Effect|101893|The Practice Effect|David Brin|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171482101s/101893.jpg|1771225], our hero finds himself in a relatively uncivilized place where he can show his technology to the natives. Unlike The Practice Effect, The Cross-Time Engineer reads like a fat boy's dream diary. This book wasn't about the plot, it was about the other characters loving and being in awe of the protagonist.

That being said, it was fun. If you hate Mary Sue and the 'women are objects' point of view, stay far away. I'm going to classify this one as a guilty pleasure and vehemently deny ever giving it more than one star if you ask me about it to my face. ( )

I'm a big fan of time travel stories, but I had to bail on this one. The protagonist is just too painful to deal with. A barely-disguised version of the Incel author. I liked the idea of a modern man developing modern technology in medieval times, but not enough to deal with the misogynistic views of the pedophile* main character.

*He sleeps with 14 y/o's. Maybe that's not considered pedophilia in the 13th century, but it certainly is today. ( )

Oh man. What a train wreck. The author was a true engineer. He is obsessed with sex [probably because he wasn't ever getting any] and discussing in excruciatingly detail every modern wonder Conrad the character wants.
I work with engineers, so this made me laugh, because it is just how an engineer would write a piece of fiction. Of course, it is sad also, given how pathetic this story was.

And finally, Frankowski is a pedophile. I think that is pretty obvious from the story too [any one think 14 is ok? I sure hope not!] ( )

Polish computer engineer Conrad Schwartz, on a mountain walking holiday, drinks too much one night at an inn which is, unknown to him, a sloppily run front for the time-travelling Historical Corps. He stumbles into the basement to sleep it off, little realizing that he's doing so within a time machine. When he wakes in the morning, everything seems . . . different. As he eventually discovers, he has been transported back to the Poland of the year 1231; his knowledge of history tells him that in a mere decade or so this country will be overrun by the Mongols, with extraordinary loss of life. Unless . . .

He ends up at a remote settlement, Okoitz, ruled by the moderately powerful Count Lambert Piast, who befriends him and allows him a lot of latitude to do all the engineering he can manage relying on memory and the local tools and materials; in his enterprises he is helped, yet again without his knowing it, by the fact that his uncle works for the Historical Corps and, having located in the distant past, has planted, for the young man to acquire, a hyperintelligent horse and a hi-tech sword.

There's a nice European feel on occasion to the use of language in the telling of this tale, as for example when Conrad is discussing with his companion Father Ignacy the latter's detestation of Germans. Comments Conrad to the reader:

I had an uncle who had survived being a partisan in the 1944 Warsaw insurrection. He hated Germans, but his hatred was like a dislike for cabbages compared with the hatred of the supremely mild man who walked beside me. (p25)

Overall, though, I was less than delighted by the book -- for two main reasons, one to do with its rationale and one to do with my own qualms. To take the first of these first: For fear of affecting the flow of causality, the Historical Corps cannot simply retrieve Conrad from the past, yet it seems there's no problem about allowing him to build up Poland's technological capabilities with extraordinary anachronicity and thereby create a new history. I'm not sure I'm prepared to buy this: it seems like a very significant plot problem to me, too significant to be glossed over with a few bits of misdirection and a general waving of hands.

My other reason for unease is also the reason I'll not be reading further books in the series. Conrad spends a lot of his time at Okoitz boffing, usually but not always singly, the "handmaidens" kept around the castle by Count Lambert for this use by himself and his guests. That it's all a bit masturbatory is forgivable. The trouble is that these wenches, who're essentially paid servants and unpaid harlots, are underage -- and not just trivially so: they're 14. On discovering, early on, quite how young his bedmates are, Conrad has a minor crisis of conscience, confesses to a priest, etc., but then tells himself that in 13th-century Poland 14 was a marriageable age, after all, ho ho, and carries on boffing. This really unsettles me. I don't think the "marriageable age" argument washes. In terms of a time traveller from the 20th century, those girls are mere adolescents -- in fact, Conrad occasionally remarks on the schoolgirlishness of his favourite underage mistress -- and those are surely the terms in which said traveller must judge his own actions. That what he's doing is accepted as just dandy by the people among whom he's arrived is not, I think, ethically relevant: had Conrad landed among a thuggee band in 18th-century India, would it have been all right for him to rob and murder innocent strangers? And the odd thing about this element of the book is the complete unnecessariness of the pedophilia: I can't imagine any reader batting an eyelid at the historical implausibility (if any) had the girls been described as 16 or 17 years old, making them safely over the age of consent in the UK and, I assume, in the 20th-century Poland Conrad came from. As I say, this aspect meant the book left an unpleasant taste in my mouth. ( )