These stories are generally not what I would consider to be alternate history. I would expect a story in that genre to start with a change from history as we know it, and then posit what might be different because of that change. In one of these stories, for example, the conqueror dies young, and so never embarks on his conquests. The problem is that element should have been the beginning of the story, not the end.

Many of the other stories are what I would call fantasy secret histories or alternate realities, rather then alternate histories. That is, the exact same things happen as happened in real history, it is just that there is an underlying fantasy explanation which may or may not have been apparent to observers. In one case, a real war is fought using magic, but the same people still win. An alternate history would be that the loser in real history won, and the consequences that would flow from that. In another, aircraft hasn't been invented by the time of World War II, but it's only a minor element in the story. Some are not even fantasies, just things that could have happened. The stories, about Lyndon Johnson and Robert Kennedy typify where the anthology falls short. They are not fantasies, nor are they about conquerors, nor are they alternate histories, and while they might have worked as short stories in the 1960s I can't imagine that they interest too many people today; they seem a bit quaint.

Several of the stories are excellent, even if they are not alternate history: "The Empress Jingu Fishes" relates that thoughts of a shaman-Empress as her mind moves between the fishing that she is doing in the present, her memories, and the future that she already knows in detail. "Observable Things" involves Robert E. Howard's Solomon Kane fighting King Philip's War. I also enjoyed "Del Norte", based on a true story of an Aztec princess who moved to Spain with her conquistador husband, and parts of "Martyrs of the Upshot Knothole", about the afflictions of the cast and crew of the dreadful movie The Conqueror, which was filmed on an atomic test site. On the other hand, I found several of the stories rather dull, or simply not particularly intriguing, so overall it wasn't a strong anthology, even without the question of how well it fit into its genre. ( )

http://www.sfreader.com/read_review.asp?ID=487 ( )