Farthing

It can't happen here
this is a decent country
that's what they all say.

4.5

I'm still not cool with alt-history but I do love Jo Walton's style very much. This is a fairly cozy British whodunit, with an intrigue tackling broader social and political issues. I'll read the next one, but not in a hurry.

Spoiler warning. I could not put this book down for long after I got about a third into it. starting as an alt history book, it becomes a murder mystery soon, only to turn into a warning about fascism towards the end.

I found myself wishing for the longest time that it would still find a happy ending somehow, but alas. And it isn't even Herr Hitler's fault.

Definitely going to pick up the other books in the series.

This was an absolutely brilliantly written work of speculative fiction, looking at a world where Britain and Germany reached a peace agreement in 1941, and the after-effects that that change might have. As you might expect from that premise, this provides rich soil for speculation on the toxicity of evil, on the compromising nature of politics, and on environments that allow prejudice and bigotry to thrive.

What makes Farthing stand above much of the rest of the crowd in the genre, though, is that while all that stuff is there, it's all in the background. Walton puts a murder mystery at the centre of the story, and while that plot intertwines with the thematic elements, it always stays interesting enough that our thoughts are always with the actions of Carmichael and the Khan family rather than getting too far into speculative navel gazing.