Really Liked it I think the second book is even better than the first. After a Lee victory at Gettysburg, he turns his attention to taking Washington, which he feels will end the war in one fell swoop. Grant meanwhile is rushing east bringing his victorious army with him after the fall of Vicksburg. The army of the Potomac is shattered, but not destroyed and the union is rushing reinforcements to Washington. This is a very plausable what if situation. It is obvious the authors are great scholars of the war of the people they are writing about. I truly believed every action taken by the leading characters as if I were reading a history book rather than a work of fiction. While Turledove may be the master of alternate history, Forstchen and Gingrich are darn good writers. Check out Forstchen's other works, he is a fantastic author.
Gingrich&Fortschen 's Second Alternative Civil War History is a Winner Grant Comes East is an excellent alternative history novel. In the authors volume one "Gettysburg" Robert E. Lee's redoubtable Army of Northern Virginia has defeated the Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg and a second mythical battlefield "Union Mills." In this book we learn that General Grant has been made overall Union Commander by President Lincoln (as he was in real life) while the impetuous Dan Sickles wins command of the Army of the Potomac following the death of Meade (in reality Meade lived until 1872). The authors know their Civil War History. Chapters are devoted to the life of soldiers in the East and the West; strategy in high places (both Lincoln and Jefferson Davis are prominent in the narrative) and vivid battlefield descriptions are brought to life, In this version Lee lays seige to Washington DC and the Confederate Army takes Baltimore! As the volume ends the tough Ohio born Grant is leading his forces into Virginia with Lee still positioned in the Maryland-DC region. This book is a great exercise in "What if?" that is a favored pastime at Civil War roundtables where we Civil War Buffs ponder what could have happened in our American Illiad. The book is well written and illustrated with fast paced action. I would recommend it to anyone interested in the American Civil War. Volume 3 of the series is called "Never Called Retreat." The best alternate series dealing with the Civl War. Well done and well researched. Highly recommended!Perhaps a bit better than the first I liked Gettysburg, the authors' first attempt at this sort of thing. The present volume is a sequel to it: the authors now have Lee having won defeated the Union Army of the Potomac at Gettysburg and the fictional Battle of Union Mills, some distance to the south of Gettysburg. Lee starts this book confronting a fortified Washington D.C., with Lincoln inside the fortifications and U.S. Grant coming east with his army to see if he can sort things out.
The authors have done a better job with the main characters here than in the first book, I think. I didn't see any of the main characters, or the secondary ones, acting in ways I thought uncharacteristic, as I did in the first book. Hood, Longstreet, Sickles, Washburne, Lincoln, all act reasonably given the situation the authors concoct for them, and Lee's maneuvers are reasonable, given what we knew about his personality and style of command. Everyone, and every thing, is pretty plausible.
I won't tell you much more than that, because I don't think it's fair. Looking forward to the third book in the series.
