Reviews :: Book Genre :: Alternate Historical Fiction :: Page 5

Anyone else just LOVE the movie Mary Poppins? Yes, the one put out by Disney. Of all the movies I watched as a child, this is one of the few that I really remember enjoying every time I watched it. As I read this novel, my mind ran back to those days: I kept seeing that view over London when Dick Van Dyke took the group across the rooftops, I kept tapping my foot to Step in Time, and at random moments I would begin to whistle Feed the Birds. The atmosphere of this book was just… ah, well, I get ahead of myself.
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The Wild West. Dusty towns. Empty streets. Tumbleweed rollin’ ‘cross the prairie. Tombstone, Arizona. Ain’t nothin that better describes it. But this ain’t no normal town. No. It’s got electric cars. Magic Indians. Undead and vicious monsters alike. Read em all and weep, people, cause Resnick’s come to town.

THE BUNTLINE SPECIAL (Amazon) is a weird Wild West tale stripped out of the historical annals of the region and twisted to decent effect by the master of science fiction, Mike Resnick. Think “electro-punk western” and you won’t be far off.
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Dave Duncan is one of those guys that has been improving his trade for years. From this experienced writer comes SPEAK TO THE DEVIL (Amazon). Duncan’s offering here is set in an alternate historical version of 15th-century Europe. It has all that you would expect from that time period; knights, feudalism, oppression and religion, all with the addition of magic and a fake country.
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Right from the moment you pick up a Dan Simmons novel and first set eyes upon the page, you know you’re in for a whole new kind of reading experience. It took me an entire paragraph (yes, the first one, because it’s just that obvious) to realize this would be the case. There is detail, flow and a sense of perfection in the way Simmons has crafted the first scene in BLACK HILLS (Amazon), and I have to admit that I readily gobbled down every delicious bite of it. What’s more, I found that I continued to devour the pages by great sheaves despite the growing concerns niggling at the back of my neck.

Dude can write.
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If you haven’t read any Naomi Novik you’re a little behind the times, but that’s okay, because I can give you a quick run-down on the series thus far. We first meet Captain Laurence and his dragon Temeraire in HIS MAJESTY’S DRAGON (Amazon), which is set during the Napoleonic Wars, where battles aren’t only fought on land and sea, they’re also fought in the air with dragons. However, these aren’t your run-of-the-mill dragons, most of them are huge and have their own aerial crew with captain, lieutenant, riflemen, bombers, and etc.

Captain Laurence, who became Temeraire’s rider by happenstance, has spent his military career playing by the book; but Temeraire, unlike most dragons of the British Air Corps, is very intelligent and has his own ideas about how things should be done. This combination makes for some fine adventures that take place from France to Africa clear to Temeraire’s country of origin, China. Novik follows the Napoleonic Wars pretty faithfully in the first books, but then the series veers from history when Napoleon attempts to invade England.
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