Wednesday 23 March 2011

Robert Oldham, "Saving the King : Book One of the Alternative History of World War Two" (2001)

As I am working on developing a course that deals with counterfactual history, I stumbled across this novel at my local public library. It was written by a Hamilton, Canada, author, who is also a graduate of the university closest to my home. So... I thought I would break my somewhat loose rule against reading fiction and give it a go.

The book was ... ok.

It appears to be self-published, but is available in a reprint edition. I wish the author had taken the time to edit out the typos in the reprint. It would also have benefitted from a critical once-over by a good editor (to avoid honkers like "he looked around and turned around...", etc.). I wish, although this might be asking for too much, that the author would have taken the time to get the German spelling and grammar correct; such as using "die Fuhrer" when a German officer refers to Hitler. (OUCH!) Given that it is a book about the Nazis in England, I don't think this is really asking too much, is it?

All of this being said, as a piece of palate-cleansing, light, counter-factual history, it's a fun little tale. It doesn't have the grit or compelling narrative of related books such as "Fatherland", but it's local, it's slim, and...erm... it could be much, much worse. I can only wonder what the follow-up three volumes are like.

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