A Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!

This book begins in 1973, but it's set in a world in which the Moors were never driven out of Spain, the French and American Revolutions both failed, Britain remains Great, the World Wars never happened, and a descendant of the executed George Washington is trying to clear the family name, marry a woman whose father dislikes him, and build a transatlantic tunnel.

The whole book is written in the sort of old-fashioned, innocent, and rather charming style that might have been employed by a novelist in the world it describes. The story is lightweight, the characters mostly stereotypical; this is a light novel and not an attempt at great literature.

The author describes in detail the alternative technology of this alternative world, quaintly old-fashioned in some ways and yet evolving rapidly. At times he describes it with such enthusiasm that non-engineers may decide to skip a page or two.

Overall, it makes a pleasant read if you like alternative history, and if you'd like to experience a world with (apparently) no big wars in its recent history. I suppose the Napoleonic Wars never happened either.

Although the author and the hero of this tale are both American, it's an Anglophilic book that treats the British with respect and affection; but bear in mind that these are basically the British as they were before the First World War, and not as they are today in our world.

Purchasers of the Kindle e-book should be warned that it's somewhat marred by minor scanning errors here and there, and there's a strange sentence in Chapter 2: “Washington sent him over a pint of beer, then raised his own and drained it in Pall Mall.” The explanation is that 12 lines of text are missing between “drained it in” and “Pall Mall”, as I see from my printed copy of the book.