Being a lover of history in general, it was quite natural for me to find the science fiction subgenre of alternate history so appealing. One of the reasons was the number of good writers out there who write on the subject so well. Harry Turtledove was not my first foray into the genre (that honor goes to Philip K. Dick, author of The Man in the High Castle), but it was his work that kept me coming back to him. The first was The Guns of the South, a story totally unrelated to this one, in which the South was able to win the Civil War due to the intervention of mercenaries from the future bringing them AK47s.
Here, circumstances which had led to the North's victory in the real world did not happen the same way, and the South was ultimately successful in separating themselves and becoming an independent nation. That is the previous history, before the novel starts. At the beginning, Mexico has sold portions of its country to the Confederate States, giving the CSA a border that extends from Texas all the way to the Pacific.
People in the USA are not pleased with this and are chomping at the bit to go to war over th situation. What is really interesting is that most, if not all the characters are real people from the time period, including a Lincoln who was not assassinated, but had been unceremoniously voted out of office after the loss of the first Civil War. Many of these characters are entertaining to say the least. How Turtledove depicts Theodore Roosevelt is the most entertaing part of the book for me.
It is a disservice to give away the ending, I suppose, but in this case, I don't see how it could be a big surprise, since about 10 follow up sequels have been published. Over the course of the next couple of years, I hope to get around to reading and reviewing them too.
I rate this one 8 stars
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