I’ve never been particularly interested in alternate history, though I grant that there’s a lot to be said of the impetus animating most such stories, which is to say... what if?
For instance: what if I’d enjoyed actual history at high school? I wonder how very different my life might have been, had my teacher only been a better storyteller. Lamentably, he was more interested in hard facts than fanciful narratives, so whilst he droned on about names and dates, asserting the dominance of numbers over wonders, my attention, inevitably, went elsewhere. Instead, I stared into space, imagining other sorts of stories entirely.
But what if things had been different? Would I have the passion for fantasy that has, in some small way, made me who I am today? If there’s anything to that scenario—and I think there is—I may just have something to thank my history teacher for after all... because otherwise, I probably wouldn’t have read Gideon’s Angel, and I’m wholeheartedly glad I did. Simply put, I had more fun with Clifford Beal’s book than I’ve had with any other in some months.
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