We've come to expect alternate history from Harry Turtledove, and he delivers again with his latest, How Few Remain. Unfortunately, this is no Guns of the South. Comparisons are inevitable, for both books, while unrelated, focus on the Civil War. But while Guns begins during Lee's dark days after Gettysburg, How Few Remain postulates that the Confederacy won the war in 1862. Twenty years of uneasy peace later, the Second War Between the States erupts when the Confederate government buys two Mexican provinces, adding a Pacific coast to its territory. Not only is the purchase a strategic and economic threat to the North, it's also an opportunity for the Republican Party -- finally back in the White House for the first time since Lincoln's reviled one-term presidency -- to even the score with the Confederate States of America and strengthen its political future. Despite the common Civil War ground, How Few Remain is closer in style to Turtledove's Worldwar series than to Guns. Readers who enjoyed his tale of an alien invasion during World War II may find this one more to their taste than Guns' fans. Turtledove created his own characters to tell most of the story in Guns, but this time he relies on eight historical figures, each necessarily given too-brief scenes, to show us the new war unfolding. It's a challenge for any writer to depict the likes of Abraham Lincoln, Stonewall Jackson, George Custer and Teddy Roosevelt in times and places they never lived. But Turtledove's admirable effort, for all the fun of seeing Lincoln crisscross the country preaching socialism, is also distracting. When other famous folks pop up in cameos -- I recognized many, including Virgil Earp, William Sherman and Ulysses Grant, but doubtless missed others -- the reader is apt to be pulled out of the story for a historical treasure hunt. The war itself is stacked against a United States of America fighting alone and surrounded by the CSA and its British and French allies. A Mormon rebellion in Utah pulls away resources from the war. The USA's generals are hopeless against Stonewall. Yet by the end so little has changed in the story's here and now that I felt cheated of a satisfying conclusion. Turtledove is working on a new series set during World War I. Scuttlebutt describes it as part of How Few Remain's timeline, and certainly the events of this book do set up interesting possibilities for the Great War. If that's the case, readers might want to save this book to read as a prequel, for it strikes me mainly as needed background for a wildly different World War I setting.
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| About the Reviewer
Renee Stern warns parents of small children that an early and steady diet of sf/f made her the person she is today. |
How Few Remain