Wow. I don't know where to start. The book was just so bad. Well, it's dated. It's only 10 years old, but being set so far into the future (he didnt give an exact year, but I estimate about 80 years) ages a book extremely quickly. The tech in this book is actually less advanced than what we have now. I know.

I should probably backtrack. The premise of this book is that at some time (Turtledove doesn't like to use exact years) people in our world learned how to dimension travel. So, like the greedy people we are, we traveled to other worlds, took their supplies (most notably oil, cause we're still using that 80 years in the future *sarcasm*) and returned with it to our world.

The plot revolves around the Solters family (did anyone else notice the typo on the back of the book) who travel to a world in which the Roman Empire never fell. Interesting. I take a Latin class so I thought this could be pretty cool. Wrong.

In this strange world (which Turtledove claims came about by the nondeath of some random general) the Roman Empire is still around 2,000 years later but, incredibly, has changed very little. With the exceptions of guns, watches, and neoLatin (their strange new language); their culture is essentially exactly the same. Turtledove tries to explain, but honestly it's half-assed and pretty weak.

You should keep in mind that I couldn't finish this book. I didn't even get to the main plot point, which you can read about on the book or here on GoodReads. Just keep in mind that I cut a lot from this review, cause there was just so much I had to say (none of it good) and I couldn't fit it all. ( )

For a young readership. There's a lot of repetition, nothing much really happens in the story, and the tone is often annoyingly paternalistic, even when that's really not approriate.
For example, first the Lietuvvan empire is described as barbarian in comparison with Rome, then we readers are reminded that we should not judge the Lietuvans since they are not much different from the Romans.

For a story on such wildly imaginary premises, it could do with more imagination. 2000 years of Roman empire, and supposedly nothin really changed. Right.

But the skill of the author is as always very appreciable, and the genre underused. ( )

This young adult story of crosstime travel to an alternate world where the Roman Empire still flourished into the Medieval era, where primitive firearms and cannons formed part of the military arsenal, was a total waste of time. The premise of crosstime travel was silly and full of holes, and nothing happened in the dull plot which produced any level of drama unless you find encounters with nosy bureaucrats suspenseful. Particularly annoying was the tedious moralizing on issues of slavery and fur clothing. There were a few interesting insights for young readers regarding some of the unpleasant features of Medieval day-to-day life compared to modern living but not nearly enough to redeem this woeful literary effort by the man who is considered by many as the master of alternate history. ( )

I'd always heard of Turtledove as a good writer of alternate history, but hadn't read anything by him until this book, which I picked up at random. Although nothing on the cover marks this as a YA novel, it definitely is - moreover, it's a YA novel written in an infuriatingly condescending, didactic style which assumes the reader knows nothing of the most basic concepts of history, and is incapable of looking things up or even understanding anything that isn't stated in simple, short words. Reading it, I felt like I had been stuck in some kind of remedial class!
The premise is that, in the near future, travel into alternate worlds has been discovered, and is being used for commerce - products are brought from the "alternates" by merchants who pose as local people. Due to a technical glitch (?) two teenage siblings are stranded without their merchant parents in a medieval-style Eastern European country (which, for some reason, hasn't progressed or changed since the days of the Roman Empire). and have to get through the situation on their own. Unfortunately, there's not really all that much to "get through." Some bureaucrats ask some questions, there's some suspicion - but nothing really happens. The two teenagers act and think in a ridiculously immature manner, and there wasn't really much of anything interesting or different about the world that they're stuck in.
Not at all recommended. ( )

I'm not that taken with the young adult novels that HT put out starting with this one. Agrippa's Rome is not very interesting with matchlocks, and the research wasn't all that Great. Harry's best period is later in time. ( )