With the execution of George Washington in the Tower of London, the American rebellion has seemingly faded to nothing more than a few leftover stragglers. The Loyalists and British troops have control of nearly all of the Atlantic seaboard and the rebels have scattered westward, been imprisoned in Jamaica, or dead.
All hope is lost.
Or is it?
The spirit of rebellion and liberty lives on in Robert Conroy’s latest alternate history venture, Liberty: 1784. With a strong cast of characters from American history melded in with fictional leads, the novel sweeps you off your feet as you are uprooted from the traditional sense and slapped back into the harsh reality of a land of failed freedom.
Will Drake is a prisoner of war on board a derelict ship, the Suffolk, and is certain that he is to die soon. Half-starved, he and the few survivors on the grounded ship have been forced to hide the bodies of their deceased fellow prisoners in order to have enough food to simply survive. Will is the beneficiary for one thing, however. The British, while knowing that he was an officer in the Continental Army, do not realize that he was a spy. For that he is fortunate. He couldn’t even begin to imagine just how mush harsher his treatment would be if anyone knew the truth.
Just as he has given up all hope, however, the Suffolk begins to break apart and sink. Will is lucky and manages to grab a piece of driftwood as he makes his escape, managing to hide from any pursuers as he is swept away from the doomed derelict and further along the coast. He gets wind of a place where the spirit of the revolution lives on, a town called Liberty, and, with the help of a free man named Homer, begins to make his escape.
Meanwhile, our second intrepid hero (heroine, actually), Sarah Benton, is awaiting punishment for daring to say something negative about King George III. Locked in a jail cell with her cousin Faith, she is awaiting her punishment: a day in the stocks. However, the disgusting Sheriff Braxton (a man who would play a more villainous role in the book later) offers her a way out: pleasure him, and not be forced to spend the day in stocks. Sarah is horrified by the prospect, so Braxton taunts her more by showing her that her younger cousin is doing so in the other room with his three deputies. Sarah, a widow from the rebellion, says no again, so Braxton locks her in the stocks. Her uncle and aunt, with whom she lives with, decide that it is high-time to get out of Massachusetts and that they all need to escape to the land of the free: a mythical place called Liberty.
The pacing of the book is excellent, and the historical notes all hit perfectly. I’d read other works of the author and have generally been left wanting, but this time Conroy absolutely knocks it out of the park. I can’t recall any time when an alternate history author actually executes George Washington and forces the others of the American Revolution to the forefront. Conroy mixes a tremendous historical event and a fantastic fictional novel into one, and plays to his strengths, which are the relations between the characters. He hits hard with combat scenes, something that I was personally pleased by. Too often do I find that alt-history writers gloss over the horrors of combat so that they can write more about the potential “What If?”. Conroy tells the “What If?”, and also forces the reader to look at the ugly underbelly of the Revolution, and the other reasons which drove a bunch of colonial farmers into open rebellion against the greatest nation in the world.
I loved this book. I can’t really say anything more than that. This one hit all the right buttons for me, and I didn’t even find myself nit-picking historical details that the author missed (and I didn’t find any glaring mistakes). The writing was tight and concise, and there were very few scenes which seemed to drag. The book is available for pre-order now, with it officially going on sale March 4, 2014. If you like the works of Eric Flint or Harry Turtledove, then you will definitely enjoy Robert Conroy’s Liberty:1784.
A must buy.
—Reviewed by Jason
Shiny Book Review 