Rating: 
Summary: America fights a modern war in 1862 against the British
Review: Harry Harrison's alternate history novel "Stars & Stripes Forever" begins by contending that following the removal of two Confederate commissioners from the British steam packet Trent in November 1861, war between the United States and Great Britain over the incident was averted because Prince Albert, the consort of Queen Victoria, toned down the language of the dispatch sent to the American government. By having Prince Albert stricken by his terminal illness a little bit earlier, Harrison sets the two nations on the path to war. However, this one slight alteration is not enough for Harrison. He is not alone in pointing out that the Civil War was the first "modern" war, and can point to numerous military advantages invented during that time (ships built of iron, breech loading cannons, observation balloons, etc.) to support his claim. Ultimately, Harrison wants to show the Americans taking full advantage of all such new technology to wage full out war against the British. For this reason Harrison manipulates events a bit further (e.g., the general who delayed mass production of the Sharps rifle conveniently dies) to ensure the American army and navy are truly formidable entities.All this is well and good, and certainly great fun when it comes to "what if" speculations, something I have always enjoyed ever since SNL did their "What if Napoleon had a B-52 at the Battle of Waterloo" skit. But where Harrison goes a bit too far is the little twist of fate he comes up with to reunite the North and South. Things progress to the point where the British invade New York from Canada and launch another attack on the Gulf Coast. However, the British confuse Biloxi Mississippi with Mobile Bay, mistake the Stars & Bars for the Stars & Stripes, and end up attacking the Confederates instead. But that is not enough for Harrison, who then has the British troops get drunk and start... all the women. Because of this outrage General Beauregard asks for an armistice with General Sherman (Grant has gone with most of the Army of Tennessee to repel the British Invasion from the North), who decides to send a Federal regiment with the Confederates to avenge Biloxi. This becomes the catalyst for reunion, along with a lesson in economics from John Stuart Mill and other interesting events. By this point we have certainly gone far a field from Harrison's initial premise. The political reunification of the country is even more fanciful than the military maneuvers, which at least have the charm of being grounded in the technology of the time. His characterization of the political and military figures of the time do not ring especially true (I never got used to Lincoln and Davis calling each other Abraham and Jefferson, or Lee calling Sherman "Cump"), the British are a collection of egotistical idiots, and in the end you get the feeling that this would have worked better as an essay rather than a novel. All the salient points could be sketched out just fine without needing to be presented in narrative form. This story continues in "Stars & Stripes in Peril" where General Lee proposes to free Ireland to get the British to stop trying to invade the United States, which has the same strengths and weaknesses as this volume. A provocative ideal, but not a compelling novel.
Rating:
Summary: Modern pulp fiction
Review: This book was a quick read and once I accepted it as a piece of pro-American pulp fiction with corresponding weaknesses, I rather enjoyed it. I understand and agree with many of the complaints of other reviewers. The conduct of the British troops in Biloxi is not unreasonable considering that the British Army was unprepared for modern warfare. A long sea voyage, brutal combat and the discovery of strong drink could cause a break of discipline in 19th Century troops. In our current PC era, this will of course anger some people. I agree with Brian Glass' comments regarding the interview with Harrison at the back of the book. Harrison comes across as a stodgy old-timer, pining for the "good old days" and jealous of the success of younger writers. I am not inclined to seek out his other works at this time. Overall, if one has read all of Harry Turtledove's alternate histories, is not an anglophile and is looking for a light read to pass some time, this would be a satisfactory choice.
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointment
Review: Although the premise is great, I had to plod through this book. Other reviewers have mentioned the great deal of improbabilities running through this book; as a non-historian, I do not feel qualified to comment further on that. However, I simply found the writing not interesting (and at times downright BAD), the characters thinly drawn (if not merely used as caricatures), and the plot weak --- pivotal battles won in one chapter?? Come on. For my money, the alternate history books of Harry Turtledove are so much better --- richly textured writing and complex characters, the use of tried-and-true historical figures in novel situations as well as multiple everyday people as main dramatis personae. Another reviewer liked Harrison's works more than Turtledove's becuase Turtledove is "depressing." All I can say is that these are books about war. War and death and killing and the stench of the battlefield probably are all depressing. You want good writing, read Turtledove; you want schlock, read this.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent story, but with a few weak spots
Review: An excellent alternate-history book. What else would one expect from Mr. Harrison? The master of the genre proves himself yet again. The book tells a tale of the war between the states as it would have been if England had intervened on the Confiderate side. The story is very historically correct, and even the fiction part stays amazingly close to facts. The book does get a little too-romanticized towards the end - the Union army performs wonders even though they are in a very bad position. One thing I do not like is that the English are shown to be rather clumsy and stupid. Still, it is an excellent book - I swallowed it in a weekend.
Rating: 
Summary: Okay Piece Of Pulp Fiction
Review: I really enjoyed this book as I was reading it but after reading the reviews the few problems I had with it were magnified. Several people point out battles are very one-sided. I did wish for a little more suspense and conflict. There wasn't any real threat from the British, it was just a matter of how the US troops would defeat them. Speaking of the British, I've noticed several readers from England were insulted by the treatment of the Brits as maniacal rapists and cartoon villains. That was the point, they were after all the bad guys. I would have much rather seen a more complex depiction. I didn't care for the one dimensional characterizations. I also thought that in the interview in the back of the book Mr. Harrison cops the old timers attitude that today's science fiction readers and writers are inferior to the old school authors. It's pretty risky to insult your audience like that. He doesn't come across as a progressive thinking scince fiction author but rather a cranky oldster (and a little conceited as well). I still enjoyed the book but liked Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South alot more.
Rating:
Summary: a good premise is not very well put together
Review: This is a book that is started with a great premise, and is only undermined by the author's hurried attempts to tie it all up in the end. Too fast, too fast. The beginning of the book is great, and if the text had been expanded another 50 to 100 pages, this would have been a much better read. The British are fairly real. As a BS in Anthropology I can tell you that at that time most british royalty were very interested in the American Civil war, and its repercussions abroad. As for the utter agressiveness shown by Victoria and her ministers, it is way over the top. While there were many wars in that time fought to expand and keep the borders of the Empire, they were not THAT bull-headed. Overall, this is a good read, just don't believe how "real" it could be.
Rating:
Summary: Very interesting premise, but....
Review: I have been a big fan of the alternate history genre for years, and this probably comes from the fact that I love history and have the kind of mind that always asks "what if?" The premise of this book is an excellent and plausible one - Britain and the United States going to war in 1862 following the "Trent Affair". However, as I read along in the book I was disappointed by how improbable some of the twists and turns in thestory are. - Would the British have dared to mount an invasion of the US from Canada when they had only a few thousand troops whereas the US could send tens of thousands and still have plenty to face the Confederates (even if they had to go on the defensive vs. the CSA)? - If the British had accidentally attacked a Confederate fort and gone on to sack the town nearby, wouln't they have tried to patch up relations with the CSA who were, after all, their allies. Even if they were overly confident, it is extremely improbable that they would have just thrown up their hands & said "what the heck, we'll just go to war against the CSA too!" - The USA and CSA would not have been able to resolve their differences so quickly, even if they were up against a common enemy. This is the most improbable point in the book. Having a common enemy does not necessarily make nations (or people) friendly toward each other. Also, the Confederacy agreeing to give up slavery so readily - not likely! Harris seems to think that all the US needed to solve its sectional and racial hostilities was a good foreign enemy for everyone to fight! Its never been that easy. - Even if US ironclads like Monitor had better armor and could beat anything in the Royal Navy, the Union only had 1 or 2 of them at the time (same for the CSA and its ironclads). Furthermore, these ironclads could only operate in coastal waters. In any deep water, the US had only wooden ships which were greatly outnumbered & outgunned by the British. The US got a couple of deep ocean ironclads by the end of the Civil War, but that would take quite a while to build and by the time they were finished the British could have built better oceangoing ironclads to match the US. - Would French/Quebecois in Canada rise up in favor of an invading US army? They didn't much care for the British but they hadn't shown any interest in supporting the US cause in the American Revolution or War of 1812, so why would it suddenly be different? The English speaking Canadians would certainly have been against the US, considering that many of them were descended from Loyalists in the American Revolution who had all their property in the US confiscated for supporting the British cause. I don't think that the author is anti-British in the sense of being against the whole British people, but he definitely has a hstrong hostility to the elite aristocracy. He portrays them almost universally as extremely arrogant, overconfident, anti-American, and completely ignorant of the technological changes going on in warfare. No doubt there were quite a few who matched the above description (all you have to do is read a little about the Crimean War!), but not every officer/gentleman in the British army was a pompous, drooling moron. The USA and CSA had their share of officers who were ignorant and owed their commission to social background & political influence too. In short, the premise is fascinating and certain parts but the direction the story takes is too improbable and too slanted against the British to make this a really good work of alternate history.
Rating:
Summary: Words fail me
Review: This is a blatant piece of "brit bashing". Although Harrison lives somewhere in the British isles, he seems to have picked up a bad dose of pro US jingoism and hatred of the English people, their Government, monarch and History. The dialogue is awful, and there are no main characters to follow, they all seem to die. He claims that this is a true story, but it is not. None of the Britsh actions make any sense...... Where do all the troops for the invasion(s) come from? Why do they invade at all, when the British commader in canada is on record as saying that he thought Canada was too weakly garrisoned to even defend itself properly?. I can just about accept navigation errors as gross as in the book but why does Buller invade the CSA, instead of apologising, leaving, getting releaved of command etc etc etc?. Why does the RN ignore an apparantly huge US fleet at mobile bay when they were already aware of it?, the USN was the prime target for attack as it was massively outnumbered,outgunned, and far less experienced and trained than the RN. Where are the British ironclad steam batteries designed for inshore work?, one was already in the Americas, where are the rest? In fact where has rest of the massive RN disappeared too?, thin air? the bermuda triangle perhaps? when the RN battles the Monitor, the rest of the RN seems to have gone away and lost its engines. Why were'nt US coastal cities razed by the RN, as planned, such as New York and Boston, the prime first targets? Why are the British so uniformly incompetent,stupid, arrogant,evil?, and why are they constantly vilified as rapists, cowards and drunkards without skill discipline, intelligence, honour or any other good points? They sound like stuck records endlessly bleating about the USA humiliating them. The Canadians are portrayed as oppressed serfs, awaiting US liberation (these are the same proud Canadians who resented and distrusted the USA, due to the war of 1812 and who fought hard to defend their own flag and King in numerous wars?, traitors were in a minority) The Fenians are presented as plucky Irish lovable heroes (these are the forerunners of the pub-bombing murderers of the IRA). The Americans are the worst. They field endless super weapons such as huge fleets of monitors(how, there were only 4 in service by the end of 1862?) and the USS Avenger, a vessel that never existed. They have sharpshooters capable of winning the war on their own. They are super soldiers, just waiting to kill every last Brit, as is the US people as a whole, and how they love it. Every battle is a walkover, even at sea, where the Monitor sinks the Warrior in about 5 min flat. The Americans then finish on a wonderful tirade against the brits on how they would love to slaughter their way into Britain to execute the Monarchy and Parliament. Perhaps this is to be followed by the rest of the population of England? thats the impression I get. This book left a very bad taste in my mouth, it exulted in the killing of the "evil english". The next 2 books offer more of the same. Perhaps in the last one we treated to see Queen Victoria and The British Prime Minister hung on the grounds of Buckingham palace, described in graphic loving detail.
Rating:
Summary: Historical Inaccuracy
Review: Mr. Harrison embarrasses himself with the constant stream of inaccuracies he portrays in the story, with very little prior to the timeline shift being close to the way things really happened. The two Confederate commissioners did everything they could to get caught, and still almost failed at that task. They had deliberately wanted to provoke an incident, so they made their itinerary publicly known and even delayed their trip a couple of times to make sure a USN ship would attempt to capture them. The British government did not want to go to war against either American "country", as they were trading with both. Mr. Harrison also forgot to mention the fact that the Confederacy had, of its own accord, deliberately shut off the supply of its cotton, to force the Europeans to acknowledge their status as an independent nation. The "Northern blockade", especially in late 1861, was more of a joke than a reality. Another "fact" that really puzzled me was when Lincoln was reading some of his "State of the Union" address to Attorney General Bates, Bates mentioned "the draft rioting among the Irish immigrants in New York...", which did not take place until the middle of 1863! These historical errors I mentioned were found after only reading 45 pages of the paperback copy. If the other reviews are anything to go by, these errors will continue to compound, until my suspension of disbelief will be impossible to maintain. I heartily recommend to Mr. Harrison that he stick to writing stories that are more thoroughly researched and executed, instead of this incredible travesty, which is far below his abilities.
Rating:
Summary: please stop,harry, you're embarrassing yourself
Review: I suggest next time, that Harrisson sees the war plans for a conflict before he actually puts pen to paper. The British are portrayed as evil morons, doomed to defeat. The Americans advance in technology 10 years overnight, while wishing all their problems of Civil War and bad leadership. They can do no wrong. The Canadians welcome the US as liberators, (unlikely, they would have resisted). This book was simply Anglophobic wish fulfillment, and bears no resemblance to what would of happened, British war plans were defensive in Canada, the army was not strong enough to attack. And the RN would have gutted the USN and US seaboard, while destroying US trade. You just can't make it all up, or you may as well give the US forces aircraft, lasers and Nuclear weapons next, then say "but if......." Its obvious that the next books in this series will be worse. I am disappointed with this work, his "West of Eden" series was fun. And I'm surprised that so many US readers fell for it all. Turtledove is far far far far better.
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