Customer Reviews

Faction Paradox: Warlords of Utopia

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The Faction Paradox books pose a question to readers: what would * write, if we took all the safety catches off?
Lance Parkin produces the definitive version of both the "What if Hitler had won?" and the "What if Rome never fell?" storyline, and then some.
This book sounds horribly complicated from the back cover, but the prose is fluid and crystal clear, easing the transition into what could have been quite a mess.
You haven't read a book like this before. The simple fact is that alternate history books and stories tend to restrict themselves to a single alternate reality--or at least one reality at a time. In this book Lance Parkin strides around the many possibilities of inter-reality commerce and warfare with such confidence and raw ability that the sires of the Golden Age of Science Fiction would be proud.
The book is extremely well thought-out and executed. It's a pity that so few people will read it because of its status as a franchise novel.
This book can be read by anyone, even and especially those who have no idea what Faction Paradox is.

Warlords of Utopia is one of those books where either the back cover blurb is going to hook or you it won't.

Rome never fell. Hilter won. Now they're at war.

It promises a lot and delivers even more.

Warlords is the story of Marcus Americanius Scriptor a nobleman on a world where Rome never fell. Author Lance Parkin spends some time explaining Marcus' world of Roma I before Marcus finds an alien artifact that transports him to another parallel world Roma II. Well if there can be 2 Romes, why not more? Soon there is trade and travel among hundreds of parallel Romes, each one slightly different.

But eventually Marcus cannot travel further, there seem to be no more Romes. Pushing himself he manages to travel through this barrier and discovers a world where Rome fell 1500 years ago and civilization is threatened by a Germanic warlord by the name of Hitler. And then the fun begins...

This is high concept at its best, thousands of Roman and Nazi worlds in interdimensional war, thousands of variations on history and technology, all wrapped up in a tight short story with an engaging narrator.

There are problems of course, but minor ones. Since this part of a larger series the mechanics of dimensional travel are not explained, the characters who provide Marcus with his artifact and later give the two civilizations their interdimensional abilities are barely developed and come off as more of a deus ex machina. 'So OK, now we have flying ships that can sail the dimensions, OK'. But Parkin does a good job of quickly filling us in and it didn't bother me too much. It's interdimensional travel if you the writer says this is how it works I'm fine.

More annoying was the inconsistent Roman technology. Roma I is a world of mile-high towers and cities with 100 million citizens and slaves. But a world without electricity, radio, firearms or aircraft. All the Romes basically have what we would call Clockwork Punk technology, think of it as Leonardo DiVinci's inventions actually working. I can see why Parkin did this, to make Roman tech distinct from the Nazis, but it bugged me. I may not know how interdimensional travel works but I know how real world technology does and mile high cities based on ancient technology just didn't work for me.

But these are quibbles. This is a fun book with a lot of mad ideas and I recommend it to any fan of alternate history.