Chen-song Qin's Reviews > How Few Remain

This is the first book in Harry Turtledove's alternate history TL-191 (Timeline-191) series, which consists of this stand-alone volume, plus two further trilogies, the American Front series and the American Empire series.

The premise is that Special Order 191 (thus TL-191) by General Robert Lee was not lost as in actual history, but was put into action and caused the defeat of Union forces. Ultimately this caused the recognition of the Confederacy by Great Britain and France, creating two major American powers in North America.

The main narrative of the novel takes place almost 20 years after the American Civil War and Southern independence. The Confederate purchase of two Mexican provinces (Mexico is an empire under emperor Maximilian in this timeline and has provinces rather than states), which breaks the US lock on access to the Pacific Ocean, causes another war between the USA and the CSA. Various characters from actual history appear in the story, from Sam Clemens (a reporter in San Francisco) to Teddy Roosevelt (an enthusiastic volunteer soldier) to a disgraced Abraham Lincoln (now a socialist agitator) to an unscalped George Custer (still a cavalry officer). As the story flows on, new technologies and new alliances change the face of war and the continent.

This book is fairly typical Harry Turtledove. His grasp of history allows detailed descriptions of (changed) events and places, and the narrative covers both high level strategic decisions and everyday lives of regular people. Unlike some of his other works, the number of viewpoint characters is large enough to provide variety, but not so large that they become unwieldy. All in all, this is a good start to a classic series.