This book is technically fairly well executed, but politically leaves me cross-eyed. Warning for sexual violence, weird race issues, and general ookiness. In order to discuss it, first, an overview of the plot:
One spring night, the island of Nantucket (with several miles of coastal waters) is inexplicably transported into the bronze age. Luckily for the islanders, the coastal waters include a Coast Guard ship, the Eagle, and her captain, Black lesbian Marian Alston, who is plenty competent to organize the transportation needs of the island (which, given the island is not agriculturally self-sufficient, are legion.)
The book covers Nantucket's efforts at self-preservation and adaptation to their new reality. This includes making contact and political agreements with the peoples around them, as well as their scramble to adapt their silicon-age technology to the bronze-age resources available to them.
The book is both a gleeful [Book:Swiss Family Robinson] style pipe-dream of how one might adapt modern knowledge to stone-age resources, and an imperialist fantasy in a slightly self-consciously progressive language. It occasionally does very well at not being fucking offensive, only to make it extra obvious when it falls off the wagon.
The one thing it does well at is not condescending to the Bronze Age inhabitants or their technology. Stirling acknowledges that their technology represents real and situation-appropriate innovation, and when they encounter the industrial technology of the islanders, quickly grasp its use and usefulness. A good part of the Nantucket islanders' technological advantage comes not from their modern technology, but from their libraries which allow them access to all the societies of history, and to pick and choose from their solutions to common problems.
On the other hand... Oh dear god, where to start. The islanders manifestly need a staple, and the island being too small for their agriculture to support their population, their only option is trade, and they decide to contact the tribal civilizations they expect to find in England, in order to do this. In the book, their reasoning is that an islander who speaks Lithuanian is expected to be able to quickly learn the language spoken there, but this surely is the author rather than probability; I would have rated odds of finding someone who spoke Classical Greek higher than someone who spoke Lithuanian, and both agriculture and trade ought to be more, rather than less advanced in the Mediterranean.
What about the near-by inhabitants of what, in the history they left, would have come to be called 'the Americas'? Wikipedia tells me the Olmecs had maize and sweet potatoes. In Stirling's books, however, the first contact with the the peoples of the mainland leads to unleashing the common cold on them, and devastating a tribe. The second is when a delusional hippie, attempting to give the Olmec some protection against what she regards as the inevitable incursion of and devastation by arming them. She is captured, and ceremonially raped by a jaguar as a precursor to being used as a human sacrifice. Later, we learn that the Olmec have been infected with mumps and will likely be wiped out.
On what-would-be British Isles, the islanders come upon a conflict between the earlier inhabitants and the recent invaders (I think from what-would-be France, based on their names end with -ix, and [b:Asterix|122410|Asterix and Cleopatra|René Goscinny|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1171839781s/122410.jpg|230588]) and find themselves sympathizing with the embattled locals, but trading with the victorious invaders, believing themselves to have no choice in order to survive. The invading people give the Islanders various treaty-gifts, included a captured slave-girl.
Which is where the lesbian pirate-queen romance takes off, awesome! (Not really pirates, but good enough!) Marion Alston is likeable, and her romance with young Swindapa, awkward, sweet, and the epitome of cross-cultural, is fun. But Alston as a character is occasionally jarring when she seems to be speaking for the author, as when she encourages another young Black cadet to stop thinking of themselves as Black, since in a few generations their skin differences will disappear into the island population like a drop of coffee in a glass of milk. She also tells him that their decision to trade in England rather than Africa is necessary, since in the Egyptian courts, she and he would be treated as just as sub-human as their ancestors had been Confederate America. What about West Africa, though? It's closer than Egypt, and agriculturally established. I would have bought someone speaking Swahili as easily as I bought someone speaking Lithuanian, and wikipedia confirms my memory of a western Bantu culture in the relevant time culture. I don't actually think contacting the people of the contingently-British-Isles is unlikely, but I don't think it's something that can be defended as a purely disinterested and logical choice.
The villains of the piece are also kind of icky, beyond mere villainy; Walker, a sailor, decides to take his knowledge of technology and use it to set himself up as an emperor in the Mediterranean. He takes with him a small party of like-minded people, including Alice Hong, a nurse who has been "Black-listed from every kink club on the East Coast", a sado-masochist who Walker dominates and who enjoys dominating the prisoners (slaves) Walker uses to build his civilization. It seems utterly gratuitous, a sort of dog-kicking to demonstrate villainy, and it doesn't help at all that she's the second most visible non-white character.
Actually, written like this, it seems far more clearly problematic than it did to me while reading. While reading, it was mostly a vague discomfort, which I attributed to raised mindfulness as a result of mammothfail.
