Name: Szymon's review of Underground Airlines by Ben Winters
Item: Underground Airlines
Rating: 4
Author: Szymon

Ben Winters

A New York Times Bestseller; a Goodreads Choice finalist; named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Hudson Bookseller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kirkus Reviews, AudioFile Magazine, and Amazon It is the present-day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: the Civil War never occurred. A gifted young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshall Service. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four." On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right--with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself. A mystery to himself, Victor suppresses his memories of his childhood on a plantation, and works to infiltrate the local cell of a abolitionist movement called the Underground Airlines. Tracking Jackdaw through the back rooms of churches, empty parking garages, hotels, and medical offices, Victor believes he's hot on the trail. But his strange, increasingly uncanny pursuit is complicated by a boss who won't reveal the extraordinary stakes of Jackdaw's case, as well as by a heartbreaking young woman and her child who may be Victor's salvation. Victor himself may be the biggest obstacle of all--though his true self remains buried, it threatens to surface. Victor believes himself to be a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he has worked so hard to earn. But in pursuing Jackdaw, Victor discovers secrets at the core of the country's arrangement with the Hard Four, secrets the government will preserve at any cost. Underground Airlines is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe.

Underground Airlines

Szymon

It is the present-day, and the world is as we know it: smartphones, social networking and Happy Meals. Save for one thing: the Civil War never occurred. A gifted young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshall Service. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four." On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right--with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself. A mystery to himself, Victor suppresses his memories of his childhood on a plantation, and works to infiltrate the local cell of a abolitionist movement called the Underground Airlines. Tracking Jackdaw through the back rooms of churches, empty parking garages, hotels, and medical offices, Victor believes he's hot on the trail. But his strange, increasingly uncanny pursuit is complicated by a boss who won't reveal the extraodinary stakes of Jackdaw's case, as well as by a heartbreaking young woman and her child who may be Victor's salvation. Victor himself may be the biggest obstacle of all--though his true self remains buried, it threatens to surface. Victor believes himself to be a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he has worked so hard to earn. But in pursuing Jackdaw, Victor discovers secrets at the core of the country's arrangement with the Hard Four, secrets the government will preserve at any cost. Underground Airlines is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe.

Sarah Sammis

A thought experiment. 
http://www.pussreboots.pair.com/blog/...

Ben H. Winters

'The most timely of alternate history novels. Ben Winters has created a spellbinding world that forces the reader to look around—and to look within. This is a thriller not to be missed and one that will not be easily forgotten.' Hugh Howey It is the present-day, and the world is as we know it. Except for one thing: slavery still exists. Victor has escaped his life as a slave, but his freedom came at a high price. Striking a bargain with the government, he has to live his life working as a bounty hunter. And he is the best they’ve ever trained. A mystery to himself, Victor tries to suppress his memories of his own childhood and convinces himself that he is just a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he is desperate to preserve. But in tracking his latest target, he can sense that that something isn’t quite right. For this fugitive is a runaway holding something extraordinary. Something that could change the state of the country forever. And in his pursuit, Victor discovers secrets at the core of his country's arrangement with the system that imprisoned him, secrets that will be preserved at any cost. ‘It is a rare thing when a writer has a fresh new provocative idea – and then executes it beautifully. This is what Ben H. Winters has done in his novel Underground Airlines. Imagine an America in which slavery still exists. Now imagine a dramatic telling of the story.’ James Patterson

Kerry Gibbons

Good book. Explored some interesting potential realities if slavery had never been abolished but I have to say that the world seemed less changed than I would imagine. The chatter at the beginning of the book about the effect on imports and exports - then tape decks vs cds and car imports etc seemed very promising, but there was little follow through on that. I wish he had expanded a bit on the idea of China importing cheap American cotton goods made with free labor. How would contemporary American slavery effect the development of electronics? Effect the development of African democracy? Effect air travel? These aspects of the book were underdeveloped in my opinion, which is a shame as they were, in my opinion, a great deal of the social commentary of the book. The idea that Michael Jackson and James Brown were creating the SAME music is a little hard to swallow.

Julie Berman

Pairs well with Between the World and Me and The Underground Railroad. Am torn between 4 and 5 stars.

Ben Nathan

Definitely in the very front of the race for best book I read this year. Absolutely fantastic. Beautifully written, smart, engaging, unique, and powerful. Highest recommendation. This is just some top notch novel work.

Anna Pinto

Not the book I usually read. It made me uncomfortable, which I think was the author's intent. The plot twists are unexpected and a bit movie like.

Bryan Alexander

This is a very powerful, well realized alternate history. Its themes pack an extra punch in 2016, when American culture is convulsed once more about race.

I've read three previous novels by Ben Winters, his New Hampshire/police procedural/asteroid doom trilogy. Like each of those, Underground Airlines is largely driven by a mystery plot that changes shape during the investigation. Similarly, this new novel focuses on the emotional state of many characters, minor and major. Winters has a genius for showing desperation and violence lurking just underneath placid daily life.

The conceit of Underground Airlines is that the American Civil War never happened. Slavery persisted through the present day, albeit restricted to four states ("The Hard Four"). It is also deeply institutionalized, as Winters shows through details of federal court cases, Constitutional interpretation, pop culture, language, and personal lives. 

As with most alternate histories, part of the pleasure (if a dark one) here is learning how the differences unfolded, from a very different fate for Abraham Lincoln to trade policies (seriously) and literature. To Kill a Mockingbird exists, but in a different form (68). Blacksploitation movies got made in the 1970s, but are known as "black revenge pictures" (105). LBJ was president and fought a bad guerrilla war, but not in Vietnam. Henry Kissinger takes the US out of the UN. Waterboarding exists, as a punishment for slaves.

The title refers to an updated Underground Railroad. Some parts of the world no longer trade with the United States, due to slavery's persistence, so people drive South African cars and smoke Central Asian cigarettes. One sad scene has a black woman confess to smoking illegal, southern-made "slavery smokes" because she can't stand Indian cigs (143). Most of our world's advanced technology is in play (but not smartphones or mp3 players), so we see how a slave state would use them. Zora Neale Hurston seems to have been a slave, and had her writing smuggled out, samizdat-style.

Our narrator anchors the plot. He's a secret investigator for the US Marshals, tasked with finding runaway slaves in the rest of the country. He's also black, and a former slave, so some of the novel's emotional heft comes from the description of his self-loathing, dehumanization, and transformation. He has several names, and we're never quite sure which one is real (yes, classic unreliable narrator).
 
"Jim" is tasked with finding a slave named Jackdaw, who seems to have fled to Indianapolis. Along the way he connects with a white woman named Martha (a nice Washington ref) and her black son (whose name quietly calls back to the Underground Railroad), who constitute the B blot. "Jim" also gradually reveals details about his enslaved youth, and how he escaped. Beyond this is spoiler territory, as the book takes off.

Now it's time for those spoilers. Read on if you dare:
(view spoiler)[Underground Airlines contains several very moving scenes. I was struck by the blood sump passage (203ff), a primal scene which explains our hero's escape and the fate of Castle. The death of Jackdaw was shocking, somewhat Gothic, and nicely powers the rest of the novel. The voyage South had me on tenterhooks.

Several aspects disappointed me, starting with the weirdness of the world. The 19th century is where the changes happen, but that's also where things get stuck. The 20th century is largely a series of attempts to address the post-Lincoln slave settlement, which makes sense, but leaves out so, so much. I'm reminded of Harry Turtledove turning a post-presidential Lincoln into a socialist agitator. That was a book far inferior to this one, but the detail nicely connected to rising industrial socialism - something missing from UA, despite the references to FDR and LBJ. It's not clear what happened with a Cold War, for instance.

The ending really bugged me. I liked the reveal of the Macguffin to be a science fictional device. That pointed very well to the future, always a necessity for a book so concerned with the past. But its revelation fades away from the book. Instead "Jim" and Martha are seen to be rising - literally, as working on elevators. They don't leave the US. Slavery remains. They will try to pry Martha's beloved loose, but we can't tell if they'll work for the liberation of other slaves. It's a strangely apolitical, ahistorical ending, a muted fall after a spectacular climax. Too much is left hanging. (hide spoiler)]

I'm still moved by the power of the book's world. Like alt.histories based on other bad outcomes (Nazis winning WWII, the Confederates winning the Civil War) this is literally dreadful. Winters' mystery plot ratchets up tension as well.

Recommended.

Michael Camilleri

I have some minor criticisms of the character of Victor but I experienced an electric urgency when reading this that I haven't felt in a book for a very long time. Winters crafts an alternate reality that raises uncomfortable questions about morality, compromise and justice.

Michael Knepprath

Bradley

Sara Sunshine

Michael Cowell

Michael Nguyen

Todd Prauner

Nicholas Charriere

Sang Park

kody probst

Arun Seehra

Hannah

The bestselling book that asks the question: what would present-day America look like if the Civil War never happened? A New York Times bestseller; a Goodreads Choice finalist; named one of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, Slate, Publishers Weekly, Hudson Bookseller, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Kirkus Reviews, AudioFile Magazine, and Amazon A young black man calling himself Victor has struck a bargain with federal law enforcement, working as a bounty hunter for the US Marshall Service in exchange for his freedom. He's got plenty of work. In this version of America, slavery continues in four states called "the Hard Four." On the trail of a runaway known as Jackdaw, Victor arrives in Indianapolis knowing that something isn't right--with the case file, with his work, and with the country itself. As he works to infiltrate the local cell of a abolitionist movement called the Underground Airlines, tracking Jackdaw through the back rooms of churches, empty parking garages, hotels, and medical offices, Victor believes he's hot on the trail. But his strange, increasingly uncanny pursuit is complicated by a boss who won't reveal the extraordinary stakes of Jackdaw's case, as well as by a heartbreaking young woman and her child--who may be Victor's salvation. Victor believes himself to be a good man doing bad work, unwilling to give up the freedom he has worked so hard to earn. But in pursuing Jackdaw, Victor discovers secrets at the core of the country's arrangement with the Hard Four, secrets the government will preserve at any cost. Underground Airlines is a ground-breaking novel, a wickedly imaginative thriller, and a story of an America that is more like our own than we'd like to believe.

Szymon &
Underground Airlines by Ben Winters

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