Title: Conquistador
Author: S.M. Stirling
Year: 2003
Date read: 7/19/2008
No. of pages: 440
Genre: SF
Rating: 3/5 = good

Description:

“If you could re-create civilization, what would you do differently?

Oakland California, 1946. Ex-soldier John Rolfe, newly back from the Pacific is about to make a fabulous discovery. It happens with a flip of his shortwave radio switch, a thunder crack of sound, and a blinding light. He blinks his eyes to discover a portal to an alternate world where Europeans have never set foot on the land he knows as America. Able to return at will to the modern world, Rolfe summons the only people with whom he is willing to share his discovery: his war buddies. And tells them to bring their families…

What mistakes would you repeat?

Los Angeles, twenty-first century. Fish and Game warden Tom Christiansen is involved in the bust of a smuggling operation. What he turns up is something he never anticipated: a photo of authentic Aztec priests decked out in Grateful Dead T-shirts, and a live condor from a gene pool that doesn’t correspond to any known in captivity or the wild. These finds soon lead to a woman named Adrienne Rolfe—and a secret that’s been hidden for sixty years.

As danger brews on both sides, two realities are threatened, and so too are the live of everyone who crosses the boundary between them….”—from the inside flap

My thoughts:

This book was an interesting look at an alternate Earth, particularly western America. I liked the interactions between characters Tom, Adrienne and Tully and the ways Tom and Tully noticed the differences between New Virginia and First Side (current Earth).