Book Review: To Turn The Tide (SM Stirling)
To Turn the Tide
-S.M. Stirling
S.M. Stirling is well known amongst the alternate history community for his Draka books, which featured the rise of an anti-America, and the bestselling Island In The Sea Of Time trilogy, which not only set the standard for other such works to follow, but also gave the trope name of ISOT to the community, the concept of an individual/group/warship/etc being sent back in time (deliberately or otherwise) to change the course of history and hopefully build a better world. There are others who have looked at the concept, from the founding work Lest Darkness Fall – about which more later – to Weapons Of Choice or even my own Schooled in Magic books, which have been described as Harry Potter meets Lest Darkness Fall, but Island In The Sea Of Time remains one of the best.
In To Turn the Tide, Stirling follows in the footsteps of Lest Darkness Fall and sends his time travellers back to the Roman Empire, specifically during the rule of Marcus Aurelius, the last of the truly good Emperors of Rome. The back story to this time travelling mission is sketched out in vague detail: World War Three is about to break out, and a brilliant scientist has set out to develop a time machine which will allow a carefully-selected team to travel back in time and lay the groundwork for a much better world. The war breaks out ahead of schedule, as wars have a tendency to do, and the scientist is killed, sending back a random group instead of the planned team. Fortunately, they know enough about the historical Roman Empire, and the technology uplifts that can be implemented within a relatively short space of time, to start working on saving the Roman Empire rather than letting it be destroyed by a combination of internal decay and barbarian attack.
ISOT books tend to rest on two separate bases; technological development, and how it implemented, and modern characters interacting with the past. Stirling’s team – a surprisingly diverse collection of individuals, from a lesbian professor to a neurodiverse student keen to take full advantage of his sudden rise in social status – generally work very well together, integrating themselves into Roman society and integrating themselves with a series of dignities until they find themselves working with Marcus Aurelius himself. It works better than one might expect: Stirling has a good eye for how Roman society worked, and their interactions with local allies – and later enemies – work very well. The time travellers have to do as much as possible, before the disasters of Marcus Aurelius’s death (and his replacement by Commodus), barbarian invasion and smallpox, threaten to overwhelm the Empire. Stirling shows them grappling with the grim realities of slavery, sexual and religious discrimination, and many other problems that simply cannot be wished away. They can lay the groundwork for many things, but it will take years for long-term change to take effect.
This has curious effects on the team itself. The lesbian professor finds herself in a relationship with a barbarian fighting woman serving as a bodyguard (this is a common trend in Stirling’s work, although he doesn’t go into erotic detail in this book); the neurodiverse student discovers that he can attract dozens of women to his bed, and takes advantage of it (and probably takes advantage of them); the leader finds himself drawn to a Roman woman, and eventually marries her. Surprisingly, there is very little conflict amongst the team; the woman who might be expected to chaff against the sexual rules of Imperial Rome do not do so, nor do any of the team pull a Walker (the bad guy of the ISOT trilogy) and set out on their own, although to be fair the opportunities for doing so are far more limited in this book. The time travellers must hang together, or be crucified together, which has interesting implications. At one point, one time travelling woman enters a relationship with another time traveller because he lacks the local attitudes to women.
Stirling also does well at drawing out the Romans themselves, although they come across as flatter characters than the time travellers. He prefers to show Rome through the eyes of immigrants and barely tolerated migrants, rather than the Romans themselves; I suspect this takes a certain kind of sense, as outsiders are more likely to accept the possibilities of future technology and not dismiss them as magic/sorcery. He never loses track of the fact his Romans are human beings, rather than dumb animals (a common problem in certain beginner ISOT novels) or stereotypes. Surprisingly, the time travellers do not try to warn the Emperor of his son’s failings, although it might be difficult for a man to accept his son would become a tyrant.
The technological aspects of the book are also drawn out well. Stirling has an excellent grasp of what can be accomplished in a hurry, rather than conceding technological uplift is impossible or taking it to ludicrous levels, and his time travellers focus on labour-saving devices and gunpowder that can be turned into rifles and cannons, giving the Roman legions the firepower they need to defeat the invaders, winning time for Rome to solidify its position and start reforms that might give the Empire a chance to survive the coming decades. His time travellers also introduce the old standbys of such books, from the modern alphabet and numerical system to the printing press and other such innovations, although Stirling does not spend much time on them (probably because, by this point, they are very much expected in such books). And they focus on medical science, introducing all sorts of basic ideas that are common sense to us but wondrous to people trapped in the past.
In case it is clear, I loved this book.
There are some weaknesses, which should be noted. Very few of the characters receive anything like as much characterisation as they need, leaving them less developed than their counterparts in Island In The Sea Of Time, and there are very few arguments within the group; the handful of suggestions of a very real split go nowhere, even though this would add a great deal of drama to the story. I can’t say for sure, but I suspect this book is considerably shorter than Island In The Sea Of Time (although it is the start of a series). Events feel as if they are moving faster than they should, and I discovered that rereading the book helped me to focus on what was actually happening. There’s a sense that the time travellers want Rome to conquer the entire world, which might not be a good thing even if the Romans are transformed into semi-modern humans with semi-modern morals. It is easy to laugh at the characters who asked “what have the Romans done for us?” It is harder to accept that Roman conquest was not always a good thing, certainly not in the first years. But a reformed Rome should be better at creating a global state with enough local control to avoid the same curse that brought down the historical Roman Empire.
There are also some points in which the time travellers appear to have had an easier time of it that this should, although – like Stirling’s Dies the Fire novels – the story pretty much has to follow the survivors, rather than people who die unnoticed, and unremarked.
Overall, a very good read. I look forward to the sequel (a snippet has already been posted).
