Review by Gary Oswald.
Quantum Leap has a lot to answer for. The 1989 TV series had its protagonist inhabit the bodies of various figures in history and solve their problems for them. This inspired the 'You Wake Up As' trend, where in the main character wakes up in the body of an historical figure and sets out to live their life better. This was incredibly widespread as a story conceit on amateur fiction forums a few years back and I've never been a huge fan of it. In literary terms, it's often deeply unsatisfying. The joy of an everyman protagonist in a strange situation is that they are a window on a world they know nothing about, but a self-insert written by a wannabe historian is often well read about that area and so isn't that. The result is you just have a guy who knows everything and understands a culture he isn't a part of better than the people who live there. And that's very dull because there's often no tension or sense of jeopardy, he just wins and keeps winning.
But I fundamentally believe that any concept can be written well, and one of the few 'You Wake Up As' stories to make it out of amateur fiction and become self-published is the Lone Star Reloaded Series of six books: 'Forget the Alamo!', 'Comanche Moon Falling', 'To the Victors the Remains', 'Down Mexico Way', 'In Harm’s Way' and 'Against All Odds'.
The concept is that Will Travers, a Texan soldier in Iraq, is hospitalised in an ambush and wakes up in the body of William Travis, the man who led the doomed defence of the Alamo in the Texan Revolution. Will has both his own memories and that of Travis, but his personality is that of the 21st century soldier (an epilogue to the sixth book has Travers' body waking up from a coma in 2016 controlled by the personality of the 19th century Texan slave owner, which is a fun bit). Given that Will's plan after leaving to army is to teach Texan history, he knows that he is due to die in less than a month.
In another story, this is the conflict the story is built on. The death of the defenders of the Alamo did much to rally the rebels behind them and became a founding legend. Does Will lead himself and his men to death to preserve that or save them by retreating at the cost of Texan unity?
This is not that story.
Instead Will, knowing that he alone knows the date of the arrival of the Mexican Army, resolves to win the Battle of the Alamo. He lies about finding intelligence to this effect and tries to gather up the various garrisons, who in our timeline were overwhelmed one at a time, into a single force ready to meet the Mexicans. In particular, he rides out to Goliad to gather the men of James Fannin, who in OTL tried and failed to relieve the Alamo. Only when he gets to Goliad, those men aren't there.
What Will had misremembered from the history books he read was that Fannin came to Goliad as part of the attempt to relieve the Alamo, he wasn't there already. At this point, he's still miles away.
This is a great moment. And in another story, this is the moment Will's plans unravel. Where he realises his future knowledge is imperfect and his soldiers begin to doubt the intelligence he is operating on. Perhaps the Alamo still falls but Will is not there due to this error and so can continue as our protagonist.
This is not that story either.
Instead Will going to the wrong town works entirely in his favour. Because of this he manages to both recruit the garrison of men in Goliad as well as Fannin's man, and the extra distance he has to travel doesn't actually slow him down enough that he doesn't beat Santa Anna to the Alamo, nor does he have any problem getting the armies over the desert; the wagons that broke down in OTL, and so scuppered Fannin, just don't break here.
Will beats Santa Anna in Book One (which to be fair the Texans did do in OTL), becomes leader of the Texan Army and beats the Comanche (the Native Americans who actually controlled most of what was the Republic of Texas) in Book Two, fights and wins another war with Mexico in Books Three and Four, privately hunts down a criminal gang who has kidnapped his son in Book Five (my favourite of the series just cos it's Taken in 1840s Texas, love that) and then in Book Six, now as President, wins a civil war within Texas after trying to emancipate the slaves, which leads to Texas being invaded by the Militias of the Southern States who then secede when Washington tries to stop them. The series as a whole sees Travis establish a much bigger, independent Texas as a free republic with no slaves.
And like a lot in these six books can be summed up by Will going to the wrong town and finding extra men there. This is a story that attempts to present problems to our protagonist, so that it doesn't feel like a walkover, but they almost always work out in his favour anyway. In Book 2, Will's first campaign against the Comanche is a huge failure, but it gets him the resources he needs to do it properly next time. In Book 3, Will is lured away to Santa Fe, while the main Mexican force attacks San Antonio, but the main force is then stopped by his reserves and he has his best men intact for Book 4. In Book 4, the Mexican General unexpectedly dies allowing his much more competent second in command to take over and bleed Will's forces in three months of attrition, but then the successor is sacked for not launching a massive offensive and his replacement does launch that offensive and is crushed. Pretty much every major battle in this series is one-sided. The modern day tactics and training of Will plus the weapons Texas experiment with means they just massacre the opponent, while Will mournfully wonders about all the men they're killing.
Compare this to Axis of the Andes, a book about a war rather than a person. ‘Axis’ isn't centred on a single person, it tells its war story through various means, often impersonal summaries of events, and as such is never as immersive as this book, never as vivid but it also has genuine surprises. The war goes back and forth, and a victory one day doesn't mean that side won't lose the next.
This is not that story.
Why this series works, and I genuinely think it does despite only really being of workmanlike quality with relatively 2d characters, is because it's about an empire being built. There is a reason why the rags-to-riches tales chime with so many of us. There is something that activates the lizard brain of just watching a person build something, of owning more and doing more every book. Slowly, obstacle by obstacle, Will is building a state, a family, an army, a people, and that is the appeal here, that is why I sped through these books to see what happens next.
And the main way that appeal works is that Will is not a lone hero. He builds by building up other men. It is not a coincidence that our heroes victory in Book 1 is won by gathering forces together or that it is the reserves who win the major battle of Book 3, that our hero has been drawn off and can't make it back in time, nor is it a coincidence that the battles in Book 6 are won by other men, that he leaves the Army before that. This is building a people by training them, arming them, and having faith in them. The reserves that save the day in Book 3 include Cherokee warriors who are paying back Texas for welcoming them in after they'd been driven on the Trial of Tears. You don't win by being the only competent man, you win by having multiple trusted men around you and if you treat people well, you have less reason to distrust them.
Which is not maybe the lesson you'd expect from a book where the hero, and presumably the author, is so clearly coming from an American right-wing perspective. Now, I don't mind that, I am happy to read books which express a world view I disagree with, but it is not exactly subtle in its world view. Will begins the book by complaining he has no one more right-wing to vote for than John McCain and when he decides that Davy Crockett, who he saves from dying at the Alamo, is the right man to becomes Texas' first President, part of the reason why he does so is Crocket is against the welfare state. Our heroes are small government men, who believe essentially that the sole role of a government is to fund the army and the police, nothing else. Texan Taxes are high, but that is because Texas needs a Prussian style dominant army, not because Texas needs welfare. Charity should be private. Will does help impoverished people but he does so as a paternal land lord and employer offering generous pensions and rent to his tenants and workers and his wife does so through a church run charity, not through laws; the key difference of course is one is a choice and the other an obligation.
Likewise when Will fights his way against the Comanche, he notes repeatedly that they are a fierce people who like war and so 'this isn't Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee' (a misunderstanding of that book's theme). The happy ending for the Texas Native Americans is moving from tribal cooperation to ruling their land as an incorporated capitalist company.
The empire Will builds is not my idea of a utopia, but in many ways that disconnect helps the story by adding more moral ambiguity then would otherwise exist. And to its credit the story take seriously the economic problems Texas would have to overcome to build an army this big. One of my favourite subplots is Will's wife trying to raise money while her husband is chasing his son's kidnappers and finding that there is no money, it all went to the army and the country is broke. (Though Will just comes back and fixes it, this isn't a story where his wife is going to be the one to come up with something together to pay the bills. When I say Will builds by building up other men, I used the last word, rather than people, deliberately.)
As the series progresses, less and less of the series is told from Will's perspective and more from the soldiers in both his armies and the opposing ones. This is, in theory, a way to humanise the enemy, but in practice nobody but Will really gets much of an interior life, we just see people moving and fighting. Will repeatedly agonises over moral decisions he makes and we never see the Comanche, the Mexicans, the criminal gang or the slave owners ever really do that.
Which makes the sixth book perhaps the most interesting politically. Because abolitionism is the one modern viewpoint that Will doesn't budge from (he even has a weird monologue where he wonders if he should given that he's living in the past and needs to accept their values, before remembering that the British had already freed their slaves by now so it's not the past, these guys are just assholes). And this abolitionism gains him enemies and friends abroad (the British even help fix an election for him, without him realising). But the book itself is not that keen on Will's abolitionist friends. John Brown is in the book and is depicted as a fanatical war criminal, mad, bad, and dangerous to know, who Texas arrests for murder.
This choice essentially positions our heroes (who end up including both Texan soldier William Sherman and United States soldier Robert Lee) as sensible centrists, surrounded by fanatics on both sides and needing to thread the needle. Which they do because the peace that end the war does not free every single slave in either Texas or the USA, it just frees some and makes it easier for the institution to end in the future. This is an interesting choice, given the victories the author hands his main characters elsewhere, that in this one way the heroes get less then they want. Lee ending up remaining with the union due to Virginia getting guarantees of keeping their slaves, which means that the main Confederate general, who Lee defeats, is James Longstreet, which is an interesting choice. It is hard not to read elements of the Lost Cause in the choices to put Lee, Brown and Longstreet in these narrative positions, to have Lee give multiple speeches about how terrible war is and how people should be less reluctant to start it, and to have Brown execute prisoners but the Confederates not (despite the way they did that in real life).
So while the books clearly condemn slavery and correctly link the Confederate cause to aggressive action for the sake of slavery, I find the sixth book somewhat distasteful in its attempts to be even handed and that keeps me from recommending the series. But I genuinely enjoyed reading these books, apart from that.
This is not top quality literature, in the same way that McDonald's is not top quality cuisine. But I sped through this the way I eat through a Big Mac. It's greasy and dirty but it fills a need. I like AH that is about cultures and about societies and how they can change and grow in different ways thanks to different events. I like AH that highlights real history and points to how things we take for granted weren't always true. And this series, by positing a Texas filled with Spanish speakers and Native Americans and Europeans and so rally to a Texas flag that isn't a symbol of white supremacism, does that. Sometimes you just need to read about something being built even if when you're finished you might regret it and wished you'd gone for a home made meal instead.
Gary Oswald is the editor of the Grapeshot and Guillotines, Emerald Isles, and If We'd Just Got That Penalty anthologies.
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