My review of the audio book: http://www.sffaudio.com/?p=38559 ( )

Ce roman de science-fiction est une uchronie se déroulant au Royaume-Uni, sur une période allant de 1914 à 1940. Les forces britanniques ont perdu la première guerre mondiale, plongeant le pays dans une situation semblable à celle de l'Allemagne d'après 1918, dans laquelle un homme au très fort charisme va peu à peu s'emparer du pouvoir et mettre en place une dictature et la déportation de certaines populations.
L'histoire est vue au travers des yeux d'un vieux professeur d'Oxford, éphémère compagnon amoureux du dictateur en devenir à l'aube de la première guerre mondiale. Le livre est intéressant, prenant par moment mais également assez lent, prenant beaucoup de temps pour mettre en place l'intrigue. Ces quelques défauts expliquent sûrement les difficultés de l'auteur à faire publier son livre dans ce format, le poussant à en faire une version plus courte qui se verra récompensée de deux prix, permettant plus tard au roman d'être enfin publié dans sa version actuelle. ( )

http://speculiction.blogspot.com/2017/03/review-of-summer-isles-by-ian-r-macleod... ( )

An alternative history through the eyes of a gay Oxford don. The premise is that the Germans won the First World War, their March 1918 offensive succeeded and the war ended in the August with the defeat of France and Britain. The Peace Treaty strips Britain of a number of colonies and overseas territories in much the same way that the Germans were in our own history. Britain has a violent period in the 1920s and a former corporal, John Arthur, becomes the leader of a Modernist movement.

The story starts in the early part of 1940 when the Empire Alliance has been in power for at least a decade. A number of short victorious wars has restored much of the Imperial prestige lost at the end of the Great War. Although all seems harmonious it is a dangerous time to be different and not to look British. Geoffrey Brook (also Griffin Brooke) has found his way to be an Oxford Professor through his tenuous connection to John Arthur, the Prime Minister. Arthur mentioned Brook as an influence on his childhood when Brook taught him at school. Brook has no recollection of Arthur, but went along with it anyway.

Much of the story is told through flashbacks where Brook reminisces of things that have happened to him during his life. Realising that he is dying Brook resolves to find out what happened to a missing acquaintance of his, a Post Office Censor that he had illicit liaisons with in an allotment shed. One night his acquaintance disappears, Brook believes that it is because he is gay and worries that the Knights of Saint George (KSG) will be along soon to arrest him also. However it turns out that the acquaintance was married to a Polish Jew and the whole family has been taken because of that. With nothing really to lose Brook tries to find out where the Jews went, the newsreels said they went to the Summer Isles off the north of Scotland. However there has been no news since.

This is the story of a dying man coming to terms with his life, he feels inadequate intellectually and believes he's only got to become an Oxford don because the better men have all been silenced by the Empire Alliance. He worries about the shallowness of his sexual life, and the fear that homosexuality being illegal means that he will be arrested and put in a camp for 'treatment'. It's worth noting that although there are necessary references there is nothing explicit here, the encounters are largely left to the reader's imagination. The author clearly transmits an angst ridden guilt at making the best of each furtive encounter as Brook can never know when he'll next meet someone suitable. There is also a loss of not being able to live life with a lover.

There are a number of inter-woven plot threads and this makes for a good story, there are a couple of bits where I guessed what was going to happen, and then was wrong. That made it more enjoyable. WHat I also enjoyed was how the author had taken the consequences of losing the Great War that German suffered and then mapped those on to Britain. Not all of them were completely identical, and it was those changes, making it more rationally British, that I enjoyed. I also wondered how long it would take you to realise that you were living in a fascist state if it slowly happened around you and you weren't one of the people being targeted.

Overall both enjoyable and thought provoking. ( )

This is another alternate historical novel set in Britain in 1940 - but this time we have not been defeated by the Nazis, because there are no Nazis - instead in this world Britain was defeated by Germany in the First World War, not the Second. The consequences as depicted here are a mirror image of what happened in Germany in the real world - so much so in fact, that it rather loses impact: a Treaty of Versailles that imposes reparations against Britain, rampant inflation, a populist demagogue coming to prominence who then, after increasing electoral success, is allowed to assume leadership of the country in the tragically mistaken belief that he can be controlled. This is followed by an Enabling Act allowing this man John Arthur and his movement, the Empire Alliance, to rule by decree, and to repress Jews (who are exiled to the islands off the Scottish coast in the novel's title) and homosexuals (who are sent for "treatment" to the Isle of Man); there is even a Reichstag Fire equivalent as Buckingham Palace is burnt down, killing King George and Queen Mary.

All this is the backdrop to the central narrative, told by a dying Oxford academic, Griffin aka Geoffrey Brooke, who taught John Arthur as a young man with a different identity and had a relationship with him, before the young man went off to fight in the trenches and was supposedly killed on the Somme, being rediscovered by chance by Brooke years later under his new identity. The author paints the dystopian society quite effectively and the writing is very good overall, but I did find it dragged in places; the action jumps around a fair bit between 1940 and 1914 and sometimes this gave me the feeling the novel was drifting rather in a way I found a little tiresome. I would certainly read more by this author, though. ( )