Just Couldn’t Finish Reading: Stars and Stripes Forever by Harry Harrison (FP: 1998)

As my regular readership will know it’s a rare thing indeed that I don’t finish a book once started. After 40+ years of I’ve normally weeded out anything that I don’t think I’d read long before it appears in my hand. Not so in this case. On the face of things it was going to be at least readable. It’s by a famous (and actually very good) classic SF author. It’s about an Alternate US Civil War and it’s the first book in a trilogy published over 10 years ago. So, it should be fine……

It’d actually been on my shelf for a bit because I’d heard rumours that it wasn’t very good, but as I was reading a whole bunch of alt-history stuff I thought why not. It certainly had a fairly interesting idea behind it. US Civil War starts, Britain backs the South, British ship is bordered by a US warship, diplomatic row ensues, row goes deeper, and war breaks out between US and British Empire.

I started having misgivings from early on. The characterisation was pretty lame for one thing. The Southerners where either stupid or evil or stupid and evil whilst the Northerners where honourable, wise if a bit naïve and too nice for their own good. The British where arrogant fools full of their own self-importance who were too short sighted and selfish (to say nothing of money grabbing) to see the North’s cause as a just a true one. You see where I’m going with this….? The icing on the cake which transformed itself into the nail in the coffin was the portrait of Queen Victoria as a raving nut-job and deeply hysterical woman. Now I’d be the first to admit that I’m not an expert on this period of British history but most of it appeared less than true to the facts. Reading about the series once I abandoned this book I must say that I am so grateful that I hadn’t wasted the money on the next two books. I think that reading how the plucky United States took on and defeated the combined forces of the Confederacy, the French and the British Empire would have probably had me tearing my hair out and foaming at the mouth! Fortunately my sanity survived by throwing the book on the floor in disgust around page 70.

Taking into account that this was by one of my favourite SF authors who was partially responsible for getting me into the genre in the first place this was a huge disappointment. Save your money, time and sanity by avoiding this junk.