This is a very good book with one feature that I consider a flaw, but some people may enjoy a great deal. The idea is that in 1946 an army captain accidentally discovers a parallel dimension where Europeans didn't discover the New World. As a result the alternate version of California is still inhabited by Indians.

The alternate California can only be accessed from one point, but people can go back and forth regularly between the two dimensions at that point. The discoverer and his friends exploit their discovery in a variety of ways that are consistent with the mindset you would expect from a person from that time-period and background. That's one of the strengths of this novel for me, though some people may find it disconcerting.

The discoverers act like Americans of 1946, not like Americans of 2003 or our idealized view of what Americans should have been like in 1946. That's something that a lot of people get wrong. The average American of 1946 was very different than the average American of our time, and that is reflected in this book. Fair warning: you may find some of the values of a few individual characters abhorrent--ranging from a mild genteel preference for people of one's own race to considerably less desirable value systems. This is not a book about perfect people in a utopia. It is about people with both flaws and virtues. That includes the Indians, who are portrayed more sympathetically than in most Stirling books, though still with plenty of warts.

This book was a long time in the planning. I'm pretty sure Steve was planning it as early as 1994 because I remember him asking some background questions for it on the old GEnie on-line network about that time. The planning and research show. Most of the time that's a good thing. The characters are generally well thought through. The alternate California is very well thought through as a political and economic entity and it seems very real.

At one point all of the thought and planning got in the way of my enjoyment of the book, though I'm sure many people will find the section involved fascinating. About two-thirds of the way through the book, a couple of people from the home time-line go to the alternate California. They spend the next forty to fifty pages wandering around and doing essentially nothing to advance the plot, though we do discover a lot about alternate California and the descriptions of what they see are wonderfully detailed. I think the book would have stronger if he had cut out about half of the travelogue. At the same time I'm very impressed by the amount of thought that went into working out how things would look and work in this alternate dimension.

This is not a perfect book, but it is very strong. I enjoyed it, and recommend it.