Cathy C. (cathyskye) - , reviewed on 9/19/2016 + 2307 more book reviews

I am a fan of well-written alternative history; I suppose "What if?" has always been one of my favorite questions to ask. I have read books in which the South won the American Civil War and found those good food for thought, but this is the first time I've read one in which that war never occurred at all. Underground Airlines is thought-provoking, sometimes powerful, and often very uncomfortable reading. Uncomfortable because we are not as far removed from slavery as we'd like to think. The world Ben H. Winters has created is altogether too plausible.

But the entire story does hinge on one thing: the main character of Victor, and Victor was not a success for me. When I first met him, I thought he was a fabulous character, and I felt sympathy for the plight of his wife. Then I learned what he really did for a living. A black man who was born a slave, won his freedom, and is now hunting people down to bring them back to slavery? It took a while for the disappointment to subside, which it did do. Winters takes us into Victor's mind, and as I learned more about him, I felt that this man was a volcano almost ready to explode.

I was primed, and I was ready for this book to take me to great places... but after the first hundred pages, it lost momentum for me. Victor lost that volcanic feeling. There were inconsistencies in the world Winters created that didn't quite make sense. There wasn't enough shown to me about life in the Hard Four. What could've been a great novel became a good one. An intriguing one. But not quite on par with Octavia Butler's Kindred.

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