Russian Amerika

Alaska, 1989. In a world where Alaska is still a Russian possession, charter captain Grigorivich Plesnett has a stained past – as a major in the Czar’s Troika Guard he was cashiered for disobeying a direct order. Now, ten years later, Grig charters out to a cossack and discovers his past has not only caught up with him but is about to violently change his future, and the future of all nine of the nations of North America as well. Spanning Alaska from the Southeastern Inside Passage to the frozen Yukon, this is an epic tale of one man’s journey of redemption and courage to face old challenges and help birth a new nation. Publishers Weekly Military SF fans will welcome Compton's debut, an alternative history in which the Russians still control Alaska. It's 1987, and Capt. Grisha Grigorievich, a former Imperial army officer now in command of a naval vessel in Alaskan waters, is chafing at the social restrictions that his mixed-blood parentage imposes upon him. He also increasingly resents the arbitrary and petty assertion of czarist authority by any two-bit Cossack in this backwater of the Russian empire. When Grisha is unjustly condemned for killing a government spy, he's sent to a labor camp. After he's freed in a raid on the camp by a surprisingly well-organized Native American separatist movement, Grisha seizes the opportunity to get revenge. Compton creates a plausible backstory for his time line (the Communists never took over Russia), which comes out naturally in bits and pieces. His depiction of warfare under extreme arctic conditions is horrifyingly realistic and vivid. (Apr.) Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information