From the first chapter, it begins at about 100 miles and hour and doesn't slow down. I consumed this book in about 3 days, only because I had to sleep, eat, and do daddy things. It was very hard to put down, and I find that true of very few books.
Mr. Conroy has really come a long way in his character development, dialogue, plot, and pacing from some of his earlier works and this book really fires on all cylinders.
MORE importantly, for this Grouchy Historian, is that Mr. Conroy does an excellent job at the history at presenting his alternate history, and does not do anything too out of the norm to affect his turning point in history. His change of the Battle of Yorktown was actually the more likely outcome as the ONLY time I can tell the French Navy defeated the Royal Navy during the age of sail was off Yorktown in a clearly Providential Battle of the Virgina Capes that ensured Cornwallis' army would remain trapped and be forced to surrender in 1781. Mr. Conroy's pivot where the British are reinforced and surge out of their siege lines to destroy Washington's army was the more likely outcome only narrowly avoided in one of those numerous turns of fate throughout America's Revolution.
In addition, Mr. Conroy really captures the meanness and brutality of what was really a civil war between the colonists and his dark vision of a post-Revolution setting where Loyalists extract callous revenge on Patriots is also well thought out and was extremely likely if the British had prevailed..
In summation, there was very little I did not love about this book, besides it had to end. Harry Turtledove really got me started on alternate history as excellent fiction, but his writing has become rather stale in my eyes and I never even started his latest series on an early 1938 World War II.
If Mr. Conroy keeps up the good work, I may not even miss it. This was a marvelous book and I look forward to many more now that he has become a hardback published author.
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