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Settling accounts
First published 2004 · 816 pages
A sprawling, dread-soaked alternate history epic that plunges readers into the grueling trenches of a fractured North America.
What it feels like
Reading this sprawling alternate history feels like watching a slow-motion train wreck on a continental scale. The narrative moves with a steady, relentless momentum, shifting between a massive cast of politicians, soldiers, and civilians caught in the meat grinder of a fractured North America. The mood is undeniably bleak and dread-soaked, steeped in the grim realities of industrialized warfare and the chilling banality of systemic evil. The prose is utilitarian and meticulously detailed, grounding the massive historical divergence in gritty, believable mechanics. It is an immersive, exhausting, and deeply compelling experience designed for history buffs who love to lose themselves in complex, multi-perspective epics where the fate of the world hangs by a thread.
- Mood
- dread-soaked
- oppressive
- bleak
- tense
- Tone
- gritty
- journalistic
- grim
- sweeping
- objective
- Pace
- steady
- Themes
- industrialized warfare · banality of evil · fragility of nations · historical determinism · survival under totalitarianism
- The writing
- Utilitarian and meticulously detailed, prioritizing historical authenticity and the gritty mechanics of warfare over lyrical flourish.
- The arc
- Begins with the tense anticipation of inevitable conflict and descends into the grueling, exhausting endurance of total war.
- Who it's for
- Readers who crave sprawling, meticulously researched alternate histories and multi-perspective epics of global conflict.
Content notes
- graphic violence
- genocide and concentration camps
- racism and racial slurs
- war trauma
About the book
As World War II escalates, North America is faced with violence on all sides--Confederate attacks on northern cities, Canadian insurgents, and a Japanese assault on the Hawaiian islands--as, in the South, ex-slaves are forced to build their own concentration camps, and Vice President La Follette takes over from the dead president while Franklin Roosevelt builds his own power base.
Description from Open Library.
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