Sunday, November 19, 2006

Book-A-Day #126 (11/19): Beyond the Gap by Harry Turtledove

This one I read for work; it's not publishing until February. And I have questions for the publisher about its genre placement and its series-ness, so I need to be even more vague than usual with books still to be published.

But I did enjoy it quite a bit; I read it during Philcon, and I kept wanting to get back to it. It's written in a limited third person that almost feels like first at times; I really felt that I got into the main character's head and liked being there.

This is, I believe, an alternate history in which civilization arose much earlier, and spread across the world during interglacial periods. This particular story takes place in the Great Plains of North America, where an empire rules south of The Glacier. (I'm sure there will be some readers who will be able to place this story exactly in time and space from a few small details -- and have informed opinions on the surviving megafauna -- but I'm not one of them. There are glaciers and mammoths; so for me it's set in a Time Long Ago That Never Was.) An expedition heads north when it's discovered that the glacier has moved back enough to open up a gap to the lands to the north -- lands unseen by this civilization for thousands of years...

(It's a great set-up, and Turtledove does some good stuff with it.)

The Fabulous Book-A-Day Index!

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