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Review: Yesterday's Dreams (Wither of Eagles Series) by Tom Brook

I'd once again like to offer my thanks to @Gary Oswald for finding a slot for this review to go up so quickly - because I'm so damn excited for this review

Long-term fans of my reviews [yes there are some I swear] may remember my excitable review of Prison of Peoples on the SLP blog back in February 2019. Written by first-time author Tom Brook, Prison of Peoples was a fantastic piece of fiction that looked at a world where the Central Powers had triumphed in the First World War. That's a pretty rare scenario anyway, but even more intriguing was that this hadn't resulted in some Kaiserreich style world in which all of the losing powers had collapsed into anarchy and turned into bizarre, anarcho-syndicalist nationstates.

Instead, by the 1930s, Imperial Germany dominates all of Western and Central Europe, and much of Eastern Europe as well, with Austro-Hungary still lurking in the background, entirely uncertain why it still exists and torn apart by internal divisions barely restrained by the addition of captured territory from Italy. Britain has returned to Empire-building, and the US remains isolationist. It's a brilliantly and fervently-imagined scenario, one that Brook populated with a fascinating range of characters and a labyrinthine plot that snakes back and forth. I absolutely loved it, and eagerly awaited the release of the next in the series.

As I mention in this review, I had feared that Brook might have fallen by the wayside for one reason or another, and as such was hugely surprised and excited to see a new title from Brook While it isn't a novel, it is a short-story collection, that gives background to the novel and many of the nations that didn't get a chance to be heavily featured in Prison of Peoples
 
I'd once again like to offer my thanks to @Gary Oswald for finding a slot for this review to go up so quickly - because I'm so damn excited for this review

You just got lucky, tbh. I had an article scheduled for today which the author couldn't deliver because of personal reasons. In those cases, that's normally when you see an article by me, I always have a few in the drafts ready to fill gaps but I'd got this article a few days earlier so it could be fitted in instead.
 
Japanese spies gunrunning into 20s Mexico sounds the sort of the thing mankind invented AH for

It can be a challenging area to explore in AH writing. When I looked at a US-Mexican War as a result of the USA staying out of the First World War, in 'The Three Eagles', I was bombarded by irate Americans insisting that it was all impossible because, apparently, even just American civilians with their weapons at home would have, they insist, been able to defeat any Mexican army very easily, even if it had been well equipped by the Germans (or indeed the Japanese). It overlooks how poorly equipped and prepared the US Army was when it went to war in 1917, having in some cases to use Civil War uniforms and in many cases, weaponry provided by the French. Yes, the USA would have ultimately won through, due to its larger population, but it would have had to work hard. It may have ended up in a Vietnam-style situation, especially if you look at how poorly Pershing's Punitive Expedition, 1916-17, into Mexico, went. Mexico was one of the first countries in the world to establish an airforce, as part of the army in 1913 and then its own right in 1915. This is one area in which current prejudices among vocal American commentators about Hispanic people spills over to challenging AH writing.
 
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