QUEEN WALLIS, a klaxon to the complacent and/or inattentive to the aims of today's global culture wars

QUEEN WALLIS
C.J. CAREY
Sourcebooks Landmark (publisher's Amazon affiliate link)
$16.99 trade paper, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The thrilling sequel to Widowland, a feminist dystopian novel set in an alternative history that terrifyingly imagines what a British alliance with Germany would look like if the Nazis had won WWII.

London, 1955. The Leader has been dead for two years. His assassination, on British soil, provoked violent retribution and intensified repression of British citizens, particularly women. Now, more than ever, the Protectorate is a place of surveillance and isolation―a land of spies.

Every evening Rose Ransom looks in the mirror and marvels that she's even alive. A mere woman, her role in the Leader's death has been miraculously overlooked. She still works at the Culture Ministry, where her work now focuses on poetry, which has been banned for its subversive meanings, emotions, and signals that cannot be controlled.

A government propaganda drive to promote positive images of women has just been announced ahead of a visit from Dwight D. Eisenhower, the first American president to set foot on English soil in two decades. Queen Wallis Simpson will be spearheading the campaign, and Rose has been tasked with visiting her to explain the plan. When Rose arrives at the palace, she finds Wallis in a state of paranoia, desperate to return to America and enjoy the liberty of her homeland following her husband's death. Wallis claims she has a secret document so explosive that it will blow the Protectorate apart. But will the last queen of England pull the trigger on the Alliance?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Fahrenheit 451 meets The Handmaid's Tale and they then mind-meld with Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four in a world where Edward VIII with his Nazi sympathies never abdicated.
As a life-long devotee of alternative history, I've seen so damn many "Germans win WWII" ideas that I refelxively shy away from reading yet another one. This one, being the second in a series I didn't read the first one of, would usually get zero attention from me for both those reasons. The way this subverted my defenses was to offer me a golden moment: My abiding contempt for the Windsors leads me to be amused and more than a little pleased that things turn out badly for them in this story.

The idea that the American Queen Wallis, a rapacious, greedy person whose grudges were legendary, would want to give up her life atop the heap is so unlikely as to be risible; but this isn't rigorous allohistorical scenario design, it's tendentious warning-blaring. It's meant for the world with Erdoğan, Orban, Modi, and Putin trotting around unassassinated in it, to detail a few of the not-at-all unlikely societal effects thereof on decent human beings. Most especially women. Author Carey is excellent at the evocation of the personal costs of totalitarian rule based on religious "principles" and there's no doubt that the cult of eugenics, written into law, would function quite well as a "moral" force like religion.

It delights me that the job our PoV character, Rose, does is to bowdlerize literature and history books to conform with the prevailing power's ideological needs. The Power of Literature is immense and very, very scary to the Powers That Be. One thing I don't see discussed in pop culture is how extremely easy Rose's job would be now: Push a patch to all Kindles and Kobos, and the "subversive" text is in compliance with Their needs. Think that's far-fetched? Read some Cory Doctorow links.

The topics Author Carey deals with in this book are so very timely that I could feel them pulling me along as the pace slackened after about 35% of the way through (a converation between Rose and Queen Wallis). The last about 15% was fast-paced and exciting, but without my deep identification with the author's evident desire to bring home the existential threat women and Others face in today's increasingly fascistic world, I'd've taken longer to finish the read.

While I have cavils on the history front (why is Eisenhower president in a 1955 where WWII wasn't like ours? why is there no mention of presumably vanished millions of Jews?), I have none on the timeliness and urgency of the author's purpose in writing the book. I'll say that I felt slightly at sea occasionally. I put this down to not having read Widowland, so I recommend you do that first.

Rose is no superheroine. She's a very slightly moist, sometimes even drippy, everywoman whose moral compass isn't aligned with her culture's. She has the decency to follow it, and not the mob. She is, then, who we can reasonably aspire to be if the worst happens.

Well worth your time and treasure.