What are you reading the week of August 10, 2014?

[SheilaT]

18. I really don't get it, having such mistaken historical facts in a novel.

It's not as though he was that early on trying to make it clear this was an alternate universe of some kind. It's just two more or less throw-away comments early on. Someone who had never before read any alternate history might somehow think that a couple of details like that were enough to establish an alternate history of some kind. But it also indicates the only persons who read it before publication were both ignorant of our real history, and also did not get alternate history.

In certain ways all historical fiction is a sort of alternate history, in that in some way or another events are depicted which never really happened. But regular mainstream historical fiction -- which is what most of this novel purports to be -- does not play fast and loose with actual historical events or the lifespan of people who lived.

Anyway, it wasn't just these things that made the book so unsatisfactory. There are much better books out there to read.