Weapons of Choice, by John Birmingham

It is 2021 and a huge multi-national naval task force is heading towards Indonesia to deal with an uprising. A covert science experiment goes horribly wrong, wrenching most of the ships into the middle of World War II. After the initial chaos and destruction there is a lot to deal with. Can the future people get back to their own time? If not, how will they fit in to 1942? And how will 1942 cope with the advanced technology and modern social mores of the task force, which has black officers, female officers and even black female officers! Birmingham’s exploration of this culture clash is fascinating and convincing. His research appears impeccable, with weaponry and battles minutely described in sometimes stultifying detail. Non-aficionados can skim through the denser of these sections to reach the more interesting social and political interactions. The breadth of the book is both its strength and weakness. The weakness is that so many characters and points of view can be a bit dispersed and distracting – hard to keep track of. The strength is that it makes the story so well rounded, with insights into heroes and villains on all sides. Two things stand out from the 500+ pages. Firstly regardless of how advanced the technology, war is a always hell in which people are horribly injured and die in agony and leaders face terrible choices. Secondly although the modern world is far from perfect in terms of racism and sexism, boy how far we have come. Female characters are particularly strongly written and even occasionally have conversations with each other that don’t involve men, although they are all from 2021. Perhaps this is not unreasonable as they are in a theatre of war, still it would have been interesting to see interaction between the future people and women of 1942. This book is the first of a trilogy, so this theme may well be explored in the further instalments.