…for want of a nail a kingdom was lost.
But what if the nail had been placed there to save the kingdom by a well meaning person, and the cost was the loss of everything you had ever known?
What They Say
Can one man save the Titanic?
March 1912. A mysterious man appears aboard the Titanic on its doomed voyage. His mission? To save the ship.
The result? A world where the United States never entered World War I, thus launching the secret history of the 20th Century.
April 2012. Joseph Kennedy – grand-nephew of John F. Kennedy – lives in an America occupied in the East by Greater Germany and on the West Coast by Imperial Japan. He is one of six people who can restore history to its rightful order — even though it may mean his own death.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The date is April 14, 1912 and the position is the Atlantic Ocean. A man approaches a crewman about to take up his watch in the crow’s-nest on a particularly cold, dark and quiet night at sea. The man gives the crewman a seemingly simple gift- a pair of binoculars that the position lacked, though oddly they seem to be a bit further ahead than even cutting edge should describe but they are described as German, so that explains things. With this gift, the ship missed its scheduled 11:40 pm date with disaster and the world is changed.
Flashing forward a century and a week finds New York City is ablaze with celebration as Captain John Lightholler is bringing the Titanic into port a century late- or at least the ship built almost to the exact specifications and given the same name as the original anyway. As he stands by the helm as the port ships bring her in he is able to take in the sights as German, Chinese and Confederate airships share the space with fireworks which welcome the leviathan into the Japanese controlled territory.
Finally back on dry land he attempts to let the various issues from the journey slip away as he can forget the failed Russo-Japanese peace talks and try to put some distance between himself and the uncomfortable knowledge that the ship he captained was too low in the water for her declared crew and manifest and the suspicion of what might have been hiding behind the sealed off area of one of her lower decks.
Peace isn’t what he is going to get however when a trio from the Confederate Bureau of Intelligence, well north of the Mason-Dixon line that delineates the country they represents boarders, visit upon him a tale from the mind of a madman- a tale which may just turn out to be completely unbelievable but none the less true. The man who brings him the tale is Major Joseph Kennedy, a well known figure from his time during the second Ranger War in which he helped hold back the Mexican Empire from invading the Second Confederacy and also for his failed candidacy for President of the Second Confederacy States.
Lightholler is going to find himself wrapped up with the enigmatic Kennedy who has made more than a few bargains and called in many debts which leave Lightholler having to at least listen to the mad tale. As he becomes wrapped in it however he discovers Kennedy isn’t one to take “no” for an answer and his entry into Kennedy’s plans isn’t the most voluntary of ones. Worse though is that at the same time the world seems to be falling apart as the failed Russo-Japanese talks have the two great Empires of the day- Germany and Japan- facing each other in a stare down where neither intend to blink.
This would be problem enough but Kennedy’s machinations are catching up to him and every empire seems to have marked him as someone they wish to talk to as they have some concerns about his actions. Even Kennedy’s own director has decided that he has given the man more than enough rope to hang himself with and now this small conspiracy of men find themselves fighting disbelief and a high level espionage dragnet that is closing around them while the fortunes of the world appear to have run out. For Lightholler, even if he finally decides to believe Kennedy, all the various pieces in play throughout the world may signal the end of humanity, a worse fate may await- He and this small band will find they need to go back and change their history…but what if they misunderstand what the cost they will have to bear is?
The RMS Titanic is a ship that has captured the imagination of millions in the (just short of as of this writing) century since she failed to make harbor on her maiden voyage. Along the way the interest of the masses has been satiated-or perhaps fueled by- a wide variety of tales of varying degrees of fiction which have kept the ship near the forefront of public consciousness. From plays, musicals, big budget movies to futuristic tales involving ships bearing the same namesake it seems the only thing larger than the ship’s real life displacement maybe all the tales it has helped spawn.
The idea of time travelers visiting the ship isn’t new either- from the BBC’s titular Doctor Who who makes a few cryptic remarks on having been there to Terry Gilliam’s characters in Time Bandits who wind up in a very wrong place at about the very worst time among the list of characters that have used to ship as a backdrop. Many of these tales though either use the ship as a throwaway line or as a dramatic build up- few use it as the starting point of the adventure and run an even more fantastic web of imagination from there.
In this novel author David J. Kowalski starts from the point of using the ship as the impetus for his work rather than just saving it up for a dramatic punch later. This starting point actually allows the author to re-write the history of almost the entire 20th Century, when one man who shouldn’t have survived does and who then uses all his influence in a way that undercuts history as the audience knows it. Because of his actions American never enters the first World War and a victorious Germany never suffers the aftereffect of losing that lead to the rise of the Nazi party or the second World War. His world isn’t necessarily one that is for the better though as it has failed to gain a great deal of the morals people learned from those wars and so a good number of the positive advancements of the 20th Century are also lost in the process.
To complete the events the author has set up he creates an amazingly alternate world with technology that is often incredibly diverse from that which we know today but which is also rather spectacular in its own way. This world’s design is often rather fantastical in that one can almost imagine how technology and society could have traveled down the paths that he imagines. While airships of unbelievable size watch over their countries the computers that help run them rely on punch cards to guide their function.
The author supplements all this work with some amazingly strong characters who would have been born in such a world. He then subjects what likely were some of the best of them to the most intense of conditions. While the madness inspired path they walk to change the world is eye catching and easy to recommend, no less thrilling is the taunt political subterfuge games that are played as various secret agents go along their business using the skills their craft has beaten into them. The author doesn’t stop there either as this new world he has created and its position on the brink allows for him to go beyond just what a spy novel from a few decades ago might have allowed to being able to walk right up to the precipice of war and staring over the edge- and then jump off it. What also catches the eye is that the characters aren’t some sort of Superman type- they are each flawed and also plagued by their own doubts and fears about what they are doing and who they are doing it with which creates some fantastically human moments in the novel.
That isn’t to say that everything found within is gold as there are times that the fantastic world created feels as rich and deep as if it lives and breathes just out of reach of what we can see and at other times there is the feeling it is almost as thin as rice paper and as fake as a Hollywood soundstage where the doors and grates aren’t what they seem. To help mask some of these issues the pace of the book hums along at a rather good clip which at times boarders on breathless. There are moments where the reader might take a step back and recognize that some events seem engineered like a magician’s trick to keep ones eye focused in one place and thus miss what the magician doesn’t want them to see, though the pull of the novel is the author’s ability to get the audience not to want to take the time to step back as they feel a compelling need to see what happens next. One of the tricks used in doing this is that the author often employs brisk cuts which give the book an almost cinematic feel at times, for better or worse.
Most of these moments that kind of standout and make one tilt the head in questioning the set up are small but at least one is rather central to the plot of the story. This premise which is kind of just thrown out there may create what is often called a “refrigerator moment” when the reader suddenly makes a connection hours later asking “wait, there is a bit of logic that was papered over there.” None of these issues however should scare away a potential reader as many works rely on them and none of the issues feel like they are particularly heinous or arduous in a way that would prevent someone from enjoying the journey of the book, if not necessarily every pit stop along the way.
In Summary:
David J. Kowalski’s debut work comes barreling in with a sizeable berth in more ways than one. While its 750 page count maybe the first thing that the reader notices, it is the incredible vision and imaginative world that he creates inside the pages that are likely to make one really sit up and take notice. While a start against the most famous doomed liner of all time may be the peak for many writers the author uses it as a springboard into a world where dirigibles still fly the sky and massive city like military structures are the penultimate symbol of power. Against such a backdrop weak characters may be lost but Kowalski brings a group to bear that is more than able to shoulder the load and which in fact actually may be the most impressive force in his tale. The Company of the Dead is a book that fans of science fiction/alternate history almost owe themselves to read, if for nothing else than to see the imaginative word this new author creates and to bask in the promise he shows- though when combining that with the fantastic story found within the reader will discover they got one hell of a ticket for their money and time.
Grade: B