Review: Just OK
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 09 21, 2012
Conroy begins with an interesting alternative to history by speculating that Hitler doesn't declare war on the United States following Pearl Harbor, therefore the US cannot declare war on Germany. So America and Japan have been fighting it out in the Pacific and Germany has been conquering Europe and Russia. And somehow in the midst of its European victories Germany forces the United Kingdom into a truce that includes German occupation of parts of Britain and Canada. I don't know how plausible this would have been since Canada was a Commonwealth country and not a colony, but I was willing to suspend disbelief.The best part of the story and its only real strength were the characters that Conroy created. The most interesting one was Alicia Cutter, the female lead and romantic interest of the male protagonist, Thomas Grant.The plot, however, just plodded along until it ended abruptly. Like Conroy just didn't know where he wanted it to go. There just wasn't a lot of dramatic tension.North Reich is okay but not up to Conroy's early works like 1901, 1942 or 1945. North Reich had a lot of potential but didn't deliver.