The United States of Atlantis [Mass Market Paperback]

Second in the "Atlantis" series from Harry Turtledove. This book follows on from "Opening Atlantis" and essentially tells the story of the American War of Independence but translates it onto an island in the mid Atlantic.

Certain real historical individals, particlarly Generals Howe, Cornwallis, and the Marquis de Lafeyette, play more or less the same roles fighting for or against the independence of the island of Atlantis which in real history they played in that of the American colonies: Cornwallis in particular has an almost exact match with his historical role but a thousand miles South-East.

Another historical character, Tom Paine, is given his real historical role but with a twist: initially serving in the rebel army in Atlantis, he is sent to "Terranova," e.g. North America, by the figure who plays the role for Atlantis which George Washington played for the US in real history. His mission is to stir up the colonists in "Terranova" so that they will also rebel, keeping the forces of the British crown busy putting two rebellions down rather than one.

Paine succeeds, but one mildly irritating missed opportunity in the book is that we never hear what impact, if any, the rebellion in Atlantis has on the outcome of the rebellion in America. After the equivalent of Yorktown the coda of the book has the Crown make peace with the colonies in Atlantis: when I was reading this book I was left to wonder whether the colonists in "Terranova" also win independence and noted that this was nowhere stated in the book.

In fact, in the scene setting at the start of the third book in the series, "Liberating Atlantis" Turtledove throws in what happens to the revolt in "Terranova" and it was not what I had expected.

The premise for the series is that there is another small continent or very large island in the middle of the North Atlantic, with massive natural resources, which when discovered by European fishermen in the 15th century had no indigenous human population, and fauna similar to that found by European seafaring explorers on various isolated islands and continents such as Australia.

The new land, named Atlantis after the legendary lost continent, is fertile and quickly settled by British settlers, with French and Spanish settlements further south. The continents which we call North and South America are found a few years later at about the time they were really discovered, and named "Terranova" (e.g. "New Land").

Turtledove once wrote that alternative history provides a "funhouse mirror" through which we can take a different perspective on real history. He has put this into practice: others have described his novels as having taken their plots from actual events but with different historial and fictional individuals and races playing the same roles.

For example, in his book "In the presence of mine enemies" a Third Reich which had won World War II eventually collapses in exactly the same way that the real Soviet Union collapsed. And Turtledove's massive eleven-book saga which begins with "How Few Remain" tells the dystopian history of a world in which the Confederate States of America won independence and survived for nearly a century but followed almost exactly the historical course which in the real world led to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

In the same way, the first book in this series described the first three hundred years of the history of Atlantis as remarkably similar, up to the end of the Seven Years War in the mid 18th century, of the real history of the thirteen colonies which were to found the United States of America.

This book, beginning a few later, describes how arguments about taxation and royal authority provoke the colonists in Atlantis to rebel and eventually declare independence in a manner remarkably similar to the course of the real American revolution. This isn't really a different history, it's an alternative way of describing the historical background to the founding of the USA.

And just as "Opening Atlantis" foreshadowed this book, as Turtledove described the seeds of future conflicts between English settlers and the British crown, both that book and "The United States of Atlantis" describe the development of attitudes to slavery which suggest that within a few generations, just as happened within the real USA, the island of Atlantis will be torn asunder by arguments and possibly a civil war about the future of slavery.

All the books Turtledove writes seem to get slammed by some readers who hate them and praised by others who loved them. I am quite certain that this will be no exception. I personally enjoyed this series.

While neither this book nor "Opening Atlantis" is a work of genius like "The Guns of the South" of "The Two Georges" both are among Harry Turtledove's better novels. I liked the characters, I thought the action was well paced, the descriptions imaginative, the sequence of historical events broadly plausible. And he keeps his tendancy to repeat things too much reasonably well in check.

Second in a series of books from Harry Turtledove, who writes a lot of alternate history novels, telling of the continent of Atlantis. This series takes known history from the middle ages on and writes about how things might have turned out if there was a huge continental sized land mass in the middle of the atlantic ocean, in between what we know as Britain and America.

The story began in Opening Atlantis and that covered the first few centuries of life there, seen through the eyes of one family and it's descendants. This book can be gotten into though if you haven't read the first one, as it stands pretty much on it's own and there's enough exposition to bring new readers up to speed.

Alternate histories can also parallel real histories to a great extent, and what this does is tell the tale of the American Revolution as it it had happened on Atlantis. With the locals tired of the taxes of the British King, they finally rebel and fight for their own independence. One war hero [who featured in the previous book] ends up leading the army.

It's a tricky war, fought in times with no satellites and mobile communications so neither side can ever be entirely sure where their opponents are and what they are up to. All this plus the fact that the locals have to fight with poorly equipped and untrained recruits, and in some rather tricky landscapes, is well described. This is war as it would have been at the time.

The writer always produces very readable prose, and manages the same here, making for pages that turn quickly enough. His characters here do have his usual tendency to engage in various moral debates about the unfairness of life and other issues, but it does go with the situation they are in.

Not a spectacular read, but a solid and generally entertaining one. One plot strand at the end exists to set up events that will come into play in the next book Liberating Atlantis.

Some may wish to note this features one bit of strong language and the occasional adult situation, although the violence of battle depicted here never comes close to being gory or gratuitous.