I Read Books: Stars And Stripes Triumphant
Harrison completes his trilogy; following the events of Stars and Stripes In Peril newly re-united 1860s USA and their even newer ally independent Ireland try to make a lasting peace with Britain. It doesn’t work out. There’s a lot of business with an assassination attempt on Lincoln and General Sherman and others taking a clandestine look at British defences while riding on a Russian yacht. But we know what’s coming; there will be a final showdown as the British refuse to accept that they have been beaten by the upstart Americans.
The British are arrogant, proud, unwilling to bend or admit any defeat or wrongdoing, stupidly pig-headed and occasionally villainous (concentrating Irish residents into camps etc) and frankly I am all for that. If I have an issue it’s with the Americans, who tend towards the competent, pragmatic, and professional. More so even than the previous books in the trilogy. There’s hardly any backbiting or personal agendas, their victorious army and navy work together harmoniously, no one seems to have their own plan that screws over everybody else. There ought to be vainglorious nincompoops wandering off with their wild ideas, screwing up the war (see: the actual American Civil War for more details).
Also the book ignores the problems with reintegrating the Confederacy and dealing with the ensuing racial tension that was a minor theme in the earlier books. I guess that’s just been dealt with.
Read This: For a finale to this interesting attempt at an alternate American Civil War that isn’t about the South winning
Don’t Read This: Britain? Losing to upstart America? The very idea!
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