A man named John Rolfe opens a portal to a parallel universe with a shortwave radio set in his basement. The world on the other side is the same year as ours, but significant world events have not occurred. Europeans never discovered North or South America and technology has not advanced much beyond the bronze age.

Rolfe gets a group of his war buddies together and they slowly begin to colonize the "new" world, bringing along with them many discontent people from "first side" as they call it.

This was a slow read for me, the author is very descriptive and you sometimes feel like you are right there alongside the characters. Battle scenes are also depicted with great detail, down to the types of weapons used.

A good read, but I enjoyed Dies the Fire by the same author a bit more. ( )

ZB4

Great book. Grabs you right away and moves quickly. I enjoyed reading this one a great deal. Time travel through a parallel universe. Very clever. ( )

Not as good as Dies the Fire, felt it was slower paced. May not read another Stirling anytime soon. His telling of a fictional world and the thought process that went into all the characters is quite impressive. I felt though a lot of it could be dropped out and the main story could be told very well in a shorter novel. Too much going on for me. I think it would be better if left to two timelines and not the four to five he has in the book. Although most of the reviews are praising good I did not find the book as enjoyable. Read my rating system to better understand my review. ( )

This book was an interesting look at an alternate Earth, particularly western America. I liked the interactions between characters Tom, Adrienne and Tully and the ways Tom and Tully noticed the differences between New Virginia and First Side (current Earth). ( )