The year is 1937, and on the eve of His Majesty King George VI’s coronation, a naval review is to be held in the United Kingdom — and the president of The Republic of Texas shall be in attendance, the first time Texas has ventured beyond its immediate neighborhood. Of course, Europe has come a-calling to Texas before: France invaded in the 1860s, resulting in a vicious war that has destroyed any chance of relations in the half-century since. So, an aging cruiser is dispatched to Europe, and after being night-bombed by Klansmen outside of Virginia who were offended by the Republic’s racial egalitarianism and subsequently hazing the French, they arrive. And…that’s it. That’s the story.

This is an odd…novel. It feels strange to call it a novel because so little happens: it’s almost entirely dialogue, which is half-discussion of navy and airplane specs, and half-info dump. The latter is useful for the reader, giving us some context: evidently, in this timeline, the Republic of Texas never pursued entry into the Union, was invaded by France in the 1860s, and has recently annoyed the Germans by encouraging Jewish engineers and the like to immigrate to the Lone Star Republic. Well, if Germany doesn’t want them, warum nicht?  I like the premise, though I don’t know that parts of the history make sense: Klansmen in the 1930s are anachronistic, since the Second Klan of the 1920s peaked in 1925 and dramatically collapsed after its leader was put on trial for raping, murdering, and trying to eat a woman, and I imagine the Civil War in this timeline played out rather differently. (No Sam Bell Hood!) Things abroad seem more or less normal: Roosevelt is in the White House, the right men are in the US Navy, that sort of thing: the French have a more difficult diplomatic position, as even the Brits and Japanese like annoying them. The villain characters are very villainy, more cartoons than anything. However, the premise is interesting enough — especially given that the second book appears to be about France attacking Texas even though it’s springtime for Hitler in Germany — that I will continue exploring.