Gunpowder Empire
-
- £2.99
-
- £2.99
Publisher Description
Jeremy Solter is a teenager growing up in the late 21st century. During the school year, his family lives in Southern California - but during the summer the whole family lives and works in the city of Polisso, on the frontier of the Roman Empire. Nor the Roman Empire that fell centuries ago, but a Roman Empire that never fell.
For we now have the technology to move between timelines, and to exploit the untapped resources of those timelines that are hospitable to human life. So we send traders and business people - but as whole family groups, in order to keep the secret of Crosstime Traffic to ourselves.
But when Jeremy's parents duck back home for emergency medical treatment, the gateways stop working. So do all the communication links. Jeremy and his sister are on their own, Polisso is suddenly under siege, and there's only so much you can do when cannonballs are crashing through your roof . . .
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Readers nostalgic for the juvenile SF novels of Robert A. Heinlein and Andre Norton will find much to enjoy in alternate-history master Turtledove's time-travel novel, the first of a new series, in which a late 21st-century world has eliminated pollution and resource scarcity by exploiting the resources of various alternative realities. The Solter family spends their summers in one such reality, on the frontier of a Roman Empire that never fell, trading Swiss Army knives and other hi-tech trinkets for grain. When the mother suffers an appendicitis attack, the Solter parents travel back home to Southern California for treatment, leaving their teenage children in charge. Then things start to go wrong the parents are stuck back home and can't communicate with the kids, while invaders lay siege to the Roman city near their summer place, and ever-efficient Roman bureaucrats start asking the kids embarrassing questions. Turtledove (In the Presence of Mine Enemies, etc.) presents his teenaged heroes with a series of moral choices and dilemmas that will particularly resonate with younger fans. This is a rousing story that reminds us that "adventure" really is someone else in deep trouble a long way off.
