[.ca] Opening Atlantis: A Novel of Alternate History (ISBN 1400155541)

Engaging, interesting - when's the next one coming?:
Another fine concept of alternate history from the master. Imagining a real continent of Atlantis in the Atlantic ocean brings an earlier "discovery" of North America by Europeans. The story is divided into 3 smaller stories centering around events of certain time periods: discovery of the continent, settlement and piracy, and maturing of the colonies. This takes us up to approximately 250 years in the past leaving lots of time for more stories about Atlantis and its people so I'm hoping this really is the first of a new trilogy. The plot and characters are well developed and engaging. This is a book that you can immerse yourself in and suddenly look up and find you've read 50 pages and lost a couple hours. By centering on short time periods and building the stories around that, there is more of a richness to the whole thing. This is a different approach from Turtledove's Civil War-Great War-WW II series and works just as well. My only beef is the cover picture shows a map of the Atlantic and it appears Atlantis is actually the part of North America east of the Appalachians and the Great Lakes. Apparently, the "twist" in history is that this piece/plate didn't join North America and there are lots of hints about this in the book especially as characters wonder why Atlantis is so much different than Terranova and Europe. Hopefully further stories in the next volumes will as the centuries advance and science comes into play come up with a good explanation. My beef though is it would be nice to have a map at the front of each section showing Atlantis and the geographic and political divisions along with the settlements in order to complete a picture of the whole continent and where the action takes place. All in all, a worthwhile and interesting premise and a great read. Highly recommended! And keep 'em coming Harry.