I found this book interesting but a bit tedious at times. The time periods covered are varied and give a good insight to the dominate family in the book, English settlers Ratcliffe. The family split in the second period covered with the respectable side dropping the "e" of the family name. A colorful tale with interesting characters make it a book worth reading and it does set up nicely for the sequel. ( )

This is one of Turtledove's alternate histories. What if there was an additional uninhabited continent in the Atlantic between Europe and the New World? What if it were first settled by fishermen from England and Brittany and later Basques and Spaniards? This 'history' begins in 1452 and covers about 300 years of Atlantean history. While there are some similarities with history as we know it there are also major differences. I enjoyed this book and if a sequel appears I will most likely read it.

The premise of the book seems to be that part of North American (everything east of the Mississippi, judging from the cover art) broke off from the main continent. This landmass is much closer to Europe than the New World was, and thus is discovered and colonized much quicker (1451).

Part 1 of the book covers the discovery of the new continent, which is quickly dubbed "Atlantis." Breton fishermen know of the existence of Atlantis, and give this knowledge to an English fisherman in exchange for a third of his catch. The Englishmen see Atlantis as a place ripe for colonization, and move quickly to start a settlement there.

Things go quite well for them, even as French and Spanish colonies are founded on the coast south of the English. Atlantis is, after all, big enough for everyone. Until an English noble who backed the wrong people in the Wars of the Roses is exiled to Atlantis, and decides to make it his own kingdom.

Part 1 has definite American Revolution overtones, with it's rejection of unfairly-imposed taxation. It also sets the stage for settler/European conflict which dots the rest of the book. Part 1 does it's job, though; it sets the stage for the book (and the trilogy, for that matter), and introduces us to the family whose history we will be following -- the Radcliffes.

Part 2 shows Atlantis 200 years later, and a conflict between pirates led by Red Rodney Radcliffe and the English settlers of Stuart led by his cousin William Radcliff. Red Rodney has been preying on all manner of shipping around Atlantis, and this has made him some enemies. The settlers ally themselves with English and Dutch sailors to fight the pirates.

We see more tension between Atlanteans and Europeans in part 2. This section parallels the battles with privateers and pirates in our own timeline in the 1600s. We start to see that Atlanteans view themselves as independent, and that their European cousins see them as backwoods bumpkins who certainly aren't proper subjects of the Crown.

Part 3 gives us this timeline's version of the French and Indian War. This is one of the things that I really don't enjoy in alternate history, and it's a weakness that I found in Turtledove's Great War/Settling Accounts saga -- the determination to present parallels to wars that were fought in our own timeline. It becomes very predictable, and you end up reading to see which character is going to be the new timeline's Lincoln, or Washington, or Rommel, etc. The account of English Atlantean guerilla warfare in French and Spanish territory was interesting, but I'm hoping that the next book in the series doesn't start out with a meeting of a doppleganger Continental Congress getting ready to declare independence from England.

I really liked the fact that Turtledove is focusing on one family as the movers and shakers of English Atlantis. That's something new for him, and I think it works well. The book was enjoyable, with a couple of reservations that I've mentioned above. I wish there was an actual map of Atlantis in the book, though that is a possibility for the second book, I'm sure. There are some anachronisms in the book, which reviewers on Amazon.com have been quick to point out, but those aren't glaring to me. I was amazed at the ability of the English to start a successful settlement right away in Atlantis, but these settlers did not face many of the challenges that the first settlers in North America faced when they arrived here. Opening Atlantis is not up to Turtledove's usual standards, and is far inferior to Ruled Britannia, but is still worth reading. I'll have to read the second book of this trilogy to see if it really has any promise, though. ( )

Turtledove, the master of “what might have been,” is at it again with the first in a planned trilogy that posits a world with an eighth continent—Atlantis. Unlike the mythical sunken island, in this alternate universe, the tectonic plates shifted so that the western half of the Mississippi watershed became a continent unsettled by humans, set between Europe and what we call North America (Terranova in the novel). Atlantis had palmettos, crocodiles and dodo birds (called honkers, and still lacking in the necessary fear of humans to spare them extinction). This first volume carries alternate history from Atlantis’ discovery by a European fisherman some 50 years before Columbus to the late 1700s—the American Revolution, in our reality. It’s a fascinating look at a fantastic alternative.
(from the Sacramento News & Review, 2-7-08: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/...) ( )

Opening Atlantis is the start of a new AH Science fiction series by the indefatigable master of Alternate History, Harry Turtledove.

Turtledove's Alternate Histories have had a broad range of points of divergence, although he has been lately sticking to more recent changes--the Civil War and the Second World War in particular. He has done some more unusual changes-- "Down in the Bottomlands" (his only Hugo win to date) posited a Mediterranean basin which never filled up, and the stories of A Different Flesh were set in a North America where the biota were Pleistocene remnants (and pre-Homo Pithecanthropi)

It is this penchant for unusual organisms and environments which inspires Opening Atlantis. What if, tens of millions of years ago, the North American continent ripped asunder, producing two continents, one of which consists mostly of what is in our world the Eastern Seaboard to just beyond the Applachians. This continent, closer to Europe, is discovered in the mid 15th century in the first portion of the volume...and is named Atlantis. This continent, being so isolated, has an unusual set of plant and animal life, with birds of all kinds as the dominant species.

Opening Atlantis tells three stories of Atlantis, ranging from its discovery, through a conflict between two descendants of the original discover, one of whom is a pirate, and finally the story of the Seven Years War (aka the French and Indian War) in Atlantis.

Turtledove focuses on the unusual biota of Atlantis in the first story, and they play an increasingly smaller role in the other two stories. I get the feeling this is partially due to Turtledove focusing on the conflicts between the human characters and the nations, and because of the merciless way that the Europeans and European creatures out compete the Atlantean birds. Its analogous in our own world to the story of Australia, where the native marsupials have not fared well against invading mammals in the wake of extensive human colonization.

Sure, I would have liked to see more of that versus the more military/political historical aspects, although its all well written and I enjoyed the book immensely.

There is only one problem with the production values of the book. With a fractured and alternate geography like this, the book sorely needs and lacks, a map. The cover art has a fanciful (and clearly) wrong depiction of what the Western hemisphere with Atlantis might look like, but its not correct, and doesn't have any Atlantean cities on it.

The next volume will be called "The United States of Atlantis" and I suspect it will cover the Revolutionary War in Atlantis and beyond. Would I buy it? Without hesitation. ( )