The Two Georges (by Harry Turtledove & Richard Dreyfuss)

[Listener]

Verdict:  8.5/10

I have read this book several times.  Each time through, I catch places where, to be properly explanatory, the authors must sound awkward.  Otherwise, though, the book is great.  There is a small deus ex machina at the end, but it's not too bad.

T2G tells the story of Col Thomas Bushell (quite obviously Richard Dreyfuss), the head of the Royal American Mounted Police out of New Liverpool, Upper California, NAU, as he attempts to recover a national treasure:  a painting of the treaty negotiations between George Washington and King George III.

Harry Turtledove is recognized as one of the masters of Alternate History, and he weaves an excellent story that takes us to what, in our world, would be Los Angeles, Canada, Seattle, Buffalo, Chicago, Washington DC, what I believe to be Chevy Chase, MD, and all points between.  The technical aspects of it -- what the world would have been like without American ingenuity, in other words -- are very interesting.

The villains of the piece are the Sons of Liberty, who want the NAU to break away from the British Empire and become its own country.  But they're nothing like the "real" Sons of Liberty were.

Turtledove also tackles racism, the Native American question, British manners away from Britain, what the rest of the world would be like, and so on.  Dreyfuss contributes characters and a general plot, I'm guessing, but the style seems more like Turtledove fleshed it out after Dreyfuss provided a working outline and about 100 pages.  Lots of food, wine, and cigars.  Martin Luther King Jr and JFK make appearances.

A good book, although I think it wraps up a little too quick, and there is, as I said, a small deus ex machina at the end.