Customer Reviews

Remember the Alamo! (Thorndike Paperback)

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A wealthy oil tycoon sends a heavily armed band of mercenaries back in time to aid in defending the Alamo from General Santa Ana's 5,000 plus man army hoping to gain prime, oil rich real estate in the present. Action is never in short supply as thousands of Mexican Army regulars hopelessly assault the fort with black powder rifles and bayonettes only to be met with automatic weapon fire, claymore mines, and seasoned 20th century soldiers. The setting is historically very accurate, and the ending is both a surprise and a moral wrapped into one.

I'm not much of a history buff so, despite all those history classes I had in school, the stuff I remember most about the Battle of the Alamo came predominantly thru pop culture osmosis, thru tall tales of Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie and thru that John Wayne movie and Marty Robbins's riveting song "Ballad of the Alamo". The Battle of the Alamo took place between February 23 and March 6, 1836, with Santa Anna's Mexican army, numbering in the thousands, laying siege and eventually overrunning the overmatched troops of volunteers defending the old Franciscan mission-turned-garrison. One historical account states that on March 1, 1836, thirty-three people managed to fight their way thru the Mexican forces and into the safety of the mission. Science-fiction writers Kevin Randle & Robert Cornett then take this one factual nugget and posit a neat time-travel scenario.

REMEMBER THE ALAMO! was written in the 1980s and is the first entry into Randle and Cornett's Time Mercenaries series, which consist of three novels in all (the other two are Remember Gettysburg and REMEMBER LITTLE BIG HORN!). In REMEMBER THE ALAMO!, two events happen to set the stage for the story. One: the research department of a powerful American oil company discovers that time travel is possible. Two: Just south of the Mexican border, vast oil fields have been recently unearthed, of which possession, by historical claim, falls to Mexico. But then the director of the oil company schemes of a way to seize control of the oil. But it involves the rewriting of history. It calls for a different outcome in the Battle of the Alamo.

A small band of mercenaries and accidental companions, consisting mostly of Vietnam vets and armed with modern weaponry, are tricked into time-travelling back into 1836, with the objective of winning the Alamo. This time-displaced group happens to number thirty-three people.

I'm not a history buff, but I love the time travel genre, love the concept of a man (or woman) of our times being catapulted into a different era and forced to apply his 20th Century sensibilities to navigate his way thru things. And seeing thru the modern-day character's eyes, I tend to get even more involved with the historical backdrop. Kevin Randle & Robert Cornett do a good job of making the Alamo passages feel authentic, tightly enough weaving their story in and out of the actual historical events. They even cover that fabled moment in which Lt. Colonel Travis drew a line in the dirt.

But the modern mercenaries don't right away get plonked into 1836. A sizable chunk of the book goes into things like the science behind time travel, the selection and training process of the mercenaries, and the introduction and somewhat of a fleshing out of the two lead characters, group commander Robert Brown and lovely fellow soldier-of-fortune Jessie Thompson.

Thing is, I wouldn't call this a consistently juicy read. A dry, clinical tone creeps into quite a few passages. REMEMBER THE ALAMO! probably would've benefited from being a longer book, because I got to the end feeling that there should've been more to it. I definitely wanted more of the residents of 1836 coping with the notion that in combat women really are as capable as the menfolk. I guess it makes sense that Brown's crew would keep to itself, but I was hoping for more interaction between the Vietnam vets and their fellow besiegeds. Also, it's perhaps a bit too cavalier, the reactions of Lt. Colonel Travis and his 19th Century volunteers towards the superiority of Brown's wondrously advanced arsenal.

Ultimately though, I think that REMEMBER THE ALAMO! is worth checking out. But if you're into reading about military sci-fi adventures, there are other works I'd recommend before this one: S.M. Stirling's Island of Nantucket series, David Drake's Belisarius series, Jerry Pournelle's Janissaries, Eric Flint's 1632, and stuff by Harry Turtledove. REMEMBER THE ALAMO! is a neat enough adventure, and I like that, here, there are consequences to those who would time travel. Within the confines of its sci-fi premise, the story is kept rooted in reality and plausibility. There's blazing action near the end, as the men in the Alamo hold off one horrific incursion, with several of the mercenaries becoming casualties. But, mindful of the perils of altering history, the mercenaries aren't allowed to cut all the way loose, and so you don't get an overwhelming sense that it's a cakewalk for these guys. It's actually a kick to the vanity, what happens to lead character Robert Brown during the big fire-fight. And, as mentioned, the book ends with my feeling that there should've been more, just more to the story.

The ending made perfect sense as if this were the actual account of the battle.

The main characters were a bit static from time to time, while the Texans are very flat, hardly any depth at all, right down to the cliche coon skin cap. I would not have been surprised if one of them would have said "lets head them off at the pass"

But it does have some good points, with a plot twist here and there.

These two authors have come so close to making a benchmark in this type of genre but miss the mark somewhat. This is definately one of their better try's unlike most of their other books. The best one they wrote together is The Aldebaran Campaign.