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