Opening Atlantis / Harry Turtledove

Opening Atlantis

category: fantasy, author:

Harry Turtledove

book 1 of Atlantis
original copyright 2007,
read in November 2011

Agamedes' opinion: 6 out of 10

Ho hum. A history book.

Okay, it's called an alternative history book. Still starts out boring.

So here's a new very large island, halfway between Europe and America. It's uninhabited. The settlers decide to call it Atlantis.

So what?!

Sometime in the future -- perhaps in the second or third book of Atlantis -- there may be some impact on the world as we know it. So far, it's just settlers settling. And fighting.

The first section of the book -- initial settlement -- is really, really boring. It's a new land. There are new animals. No-one can explain why they are different to animals everywhere else in the known world. Doesn't stop the settlers killing the animals.

The second section is a battle of pirates versus settlers. A bit more excitement. Trouble is -- despite reading quite a few pages of the book so far -- we don't know the characters... Okay, we quickly learn about them. But anyone that we met earlier -- is dead.

Ditto with the third section: Descendants of original settlers fight it out. Quite exciting. Though the British fleet is so powerful that it can provide deus ex machina as and when required.

Am I supposed to be pleased that the British settlers wiped out the French settlers? Well, I'm not. Not that I have any preference for the French...

But wouldn't it be nice if the two groups could find some other way to settle their differences?

In the first section of the book, one settler uses his influence to prevent inter-settlement wars. That's nice, I thought. Perhaps Atlantis will be different.

But no.

Every native animal is being exterminated. Every native plant is being killed. Feral pests -- introduced from the home countries, deliberately and accidentally -- are taking over. Every accessible area of land is being cleared, populated, over-populated and polluted. Every person who is not "one of us" is hated, feared, conquered or killed.

It's a history of Australia...

It's a history of America...

It's a history of the human destruction of any part of our world...

So what's "alternate" about this history?

What Turtledove is saying is, Give humans any new piece of land and they will treat it like dirt.

Not an alternate history.

Just history as it happens. Everywhere.

Depressing.

Boring.

..o0o..

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