From the remainders table in Whitcoulls.

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There are aspects of this book which are truly terrible (for one, the science and computer stuff is so totally wrong that I almost gave up reading in disgust on the first page - I suspect Hawes's research on IT matters consisted of reading a couple of FAQs for the meanings of some TLAs, plus a bit of mediocre science fiction), but despite that, I did kind of enjoy this book - if you ignore the faults, it's quite an amusing (if incredibly far-fetched) speculation on what might have happened if Napolean hadn't lost at Waterloo. Pity the ending was so weak... (slight spoiler follows: I think the problem with the ending is basically that Hawes had spent so long proving that his two great military leaders were equal that he then couldn't decide which one he wanted to win. So he wimped out and left it as a stalemate. The come-uppance of Frossard felt pretty tacked on too - like Hawes got to the end of the book and realised that he'd written himself into a corner, and had no way to stop Frossard from coming out on top, so he quickly pulled together a few random loose ends to come up with the Waitangi debt idea - trouble is, that leaves even more loose ends to the plot than before... (like, how come suddenly everyone accepts the revised version of history?))

Oh well, fun if you switch your brain off.

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Caught at Shelbourne Hotel Friday 12 November