Given the Amazon reviews, the Goodreads rating, and the fact this book apparently has an award I was expecting something great.

At p52 I put this book down because even for the sake of a review, some things are too painful and life is too short.

This book has it all: history problems in alternative history, poor editing, flat characters, broken physics, pages of exposition, and some pieces that are just poor.

The cover and formatting are workman-like: they do the job and no more. The front matter is extensive – cover, copyright, a page of quotes, an author intro and a dedication – but lacks a table of contents. Worse, it does not create one when you open the Kindle Table of Contents option.

Editing problems like this are unacceptable:
What she saw made her push the cat off her lap and get dressed.
“Sorry kitty.” Elizabeth pushed the brown and orange cat off her lap.
Characters repeating actions on the next line is an annoyance. There is a section that jumps viewpoints from close third to omniscient narrator, and errors such as “was a prophetic,” (not “was a prophet,” or “was prophetic”) are worrying.

The alternate history background has a few errors or more. It forgets that the Iran/Iraq war involved religion and that the moment your occupying troops move in your nuclear deterrant will stops deterring insurgents (unless you plan to bomb your own troops), that Israel almost certainly has nuclear weapons (and if they hadn’t develop their own already, they probably bought a few after the fall of the USSR) and many of the events of the Great Depression.

Let’s just say it wears its politics on its sleeve (“Obama-towns” Honestly?) and its physics somewhere not on planet – at risk of spoiling things cyanide gas is less dense than air, rises and disperses in open spaces. Air-deploying sarin or mustard gas would have worked as described, but cyanide gas?

The constant by-name references to Star Trek, science fiction series like Firefly, living individuals, existing companies, etc. concerns me It both risks dating the book, and surprised me because they aren’t always entirely favourable. By page 12 I was already damn close to putting this book down.

I gave it a second try. At p76 I gave it up again.

No rating. I couldn’t finish it.