S. M. Stirling

The discovery of an alternate nation through a secret portal provokes John Rolfe to establish power in this kingdom of "New Virginia," but sixty years later in 2009, the land runs the risk of being overtaken. Reprint.

Conquistador : a Novel of Alternate History

Kirsten Simkiss

You know, I'm always interested whenever I read a new author. It's like mystery ice cream - you're never quite sure what it's like until you try it. In this case, the flavor didn't suit my taste buds. 

For one thing, I rarely enjoy stomaching an author who enjoys making their villains regularly use racial slurs. If your villain needs language like that, maybe you need a stronger villain or a stronger ideology. I actually thought the villains' ideologies were interesting, but it just soured the villain's quality for it to be so accepted to be racist at every opportunity.

Secondly, this is very much a book written by a man for men. The female character that I met had a boatload of internalized misogyny and the male characters, protagonists and antagonists alike, were far worse. Plus, the romance angle was EXTRA fake. Real people don't interact like that. It was very forced and strange.

I decided to drop the book once I reached the start of chapter four at page 100. The premise was interesting enough - a gateway to a parallel world virtually untouched by the evils of modern society, imagine what that could do in the RIGHT hands instead of the ones who found it - but the characters just didn't make it interesting enough to follow. In truth, I'd rather have had the condor from the other world as the main character instead of Tom.

I cannot recommend this book to you. It just wasn't that good.

Conquistador : a Novel of Alternate History

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