Conquistador
By S.M. Stirling
I’m going to jump right in and give you the absolutely worst part of this book now. If you go beyond that, you’ll see why I end up recommending this book. The worst part of this book is that it takes very nearly 100 pages to get into the story. That fact is really unfortunate for the book as I’m sure that many readers stopped well before that 100 pages and never completed the book.
Conquistador is dubbed as an alternative history novel. It certainly has some hints of alternative history, but it really didn’t fit the bill for me. To me an alternative history is a book that takes the world we live in and alters some part of our history and pontificates on what could have happened. In Conquistador, Stirling gives us our world exactly as it is but add on a parallel Earth that has a few significant changes in the history. Those changes mean that the Americas were never discovered.
A portal to this parallel universe opens and John Rolfe starts his own country there in what he dubs as New Virginia. A bit of a scandal begins to unfold that threatens both worlds and sets the group of lead characters onto a path of adventure where they will encounter “wild” Native Americans and more danger than they expect.
Once you get into the novel, you truly fly through it. The plot is fast and carries you along with it. I found it easy to travel along with the characters and even easier to visualize the “New Virginia” world. The novel is a wonderful story and well worth reading. I’ll be looking for other S.M. Stirling novels to add to my reading list. Of course, that’ll have to come after Deathly Hallows. 😉
You can buy Conquistador at Amazon!
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About Shane Ede
[…] I’ve read at least. I cut my teeth on S.M. Sterling’s work with a novel of his called Conquistador. It was a book that I had a hard time getting into, but it quickly became a page turner and was a […]