Free (Kindle) The Fall of the Republic by Crawford Kilian [Sci-Fi Time Travel Agency]

[ATDrake]

The Fall of the Republic by US-born naturalized Canadian author Crawford Kilian (ISFDB, Wikipedia, SFE), a now-retired college professor and occasional Aurora Award nominee, is the 2nd novel in his The Chronoplane Wars trilogy of science fiction time-travel adventures involving a temporal agency tasked with preventing disasters by altering history on alternate Earths, this one taking place on a parallel which is staving off collapse by exploiting teenagers able to be trained into human computers, starring one such Trainable who has apparently decided to use his skills to change the future regardless of who or what stands in his way, free for a limited time courtesy of publisher Endeavour Press' Venture imprint.

This was originally published in 1987 by Ballantine's Del Rey imprint. We've previously received the 1st novel as a freebie as well: Empire of Time. Apparently this story is a prequel to that, giving the backstory of one of the characters and their originating world.

Currently free @ Amazon (available to Canadians & in the UK and pretty much everywhere else Amazon sells worldwide, since this is being done via their KDP Select exclusive-or-else program)

Description
The past was safe and comforting, knowable. The present was a series of insults, disappointments, and frights. The future could only be disaster.

Set in the mid-1990's, the world is on the verge of collapse.

Several nations have already descended into chaos and the US is now only months away from anarchy. The old nationalism no longer works. But the discovery of "Trainables" - a select portion of the teenager population who can be trained to read, comprehend, and remember vast amounts of data like a computer - staves off disaster for a little longer. These Trainables are placed in vital government jobs - security, analysis, etc. With these "human computers" in place, the government can maintain control.

Jerry Pierce was one such Trainable…

A colonel barely out of his teens, Pierce learned early not to let scruples, friendship, or inconvenient dead bodies stand between him and doing a job right. And a good thing too-because it wasn’t just civilization he was fighting to preserve, it was all Mankind and the planet Earth itself.

[Apache]

Thank you. I remember reading this series in DTB when it was first released. I think I will give it a reread to see if it holds up to my memories.
Apache

[Acataloger]

Thanks, I'm glad to add this to Empire of Time. Apparently volume 3 (Rogue Emperor) is only available as a DTB. It seems unlikely that it will be released as an e-book; all the descriptions refer to a two-book series.

[svenlind]

Also many thanks from me.