Title Caliphate Series --- Author Tom Kratman Cover Art --- Publisher Baen - 2008 First Printing Baen - 2008 Category Science Fiction Warnings Blatantly anti-islamic Main Characters Petra, Hans, Hamilton, Ling Main Elements Alternate History

Demography is destiny. In the 22nd century European deathbed demographics have turned the continent over to the more fertile Moslems. Atheism in Europe has been exterminated. Homosexuals are hanged, stoned or crucified. Such Christians as remain are relegated to dhimmitude, a form of second class citizenship. They are denied arms, denied civil rights, denied a voice, and specially taxed via the Koranic yizya. Their sons are taken as conscripted soldiers while their daughters are subject to the depredations of the continent's new masters.

In that world, Petra, a German girl sold into prostitution as a slave at the age of nine to pay her family's yizya, dreams of escape. Unlike most girls of the day, Petra can read. And in her only real possession, her grandmother's diary, a diary detailing the fall of European civilization, Petra has learned of a magic place across the sea: America.

But it will take more than magic to free Petra and Europe from their bonds; it will take guns, superior technology, and a reborn spirit of freedom.

I'm vaguely uncomfortable admitting to having read this book. I blame the Baen Free Library for making it available, and my inability to pass on a free book, and then my inability to not finish reading a book. This book was so very, very anti-islamic...although it did have some bright moments like when the daughter of the man who bought Petra as a slave befriended her, even teaching her to read.

And for what it's worth, it's not just Islam that's evil. Apparently the Canadians are pretty darn bad too, since they refused to join the Imperial USA they've been conquered and the "Frenchies" are now rebels in their own lands. And the Americans don't come off smelling like roses either going around beating up anyone they don't like. The Chinese are downright scary, able to control agents remotely through implants in their heads. Pretty much everyone gets dumped on in this book.

And to boot, it's badly written. It is constantly jumping times and places, and giving some massive info-dumps at times. It wasn't even very interesting (unless you're into graphic rape and battle scenes) until the last third when it becomes a kind of "Mission Impossible" story that was actually entertaining as a small group of resistance try to stop some scientists from coming up with an end-of-world kind of plague while rescuing a bunch of little kids from slavery.

Now this book was written in 2008, so we already had Sept 11 in the US. But he was spot on predicting that those events, among others, would trigger the American population to vote for...well let's just say he resembles Trump...at lot. Not physically, but in his rhetoric. He also predicted something very similar to Brexit. I mean maybe it was kind of obvious that the world would violently move towards Nationalist and Xenophobic politics, and though the trigger wasn't exactly what happened in the book, people's fear of terrorism and the unrest in the Middle East and the flood of refugees from those regions are more or less what he's warning against (he left out the influence of the Internet on people's mindsets, and their ability to only read news that confirms their belief but maybe that's a bit more of a recent development in the past decade). I see women here in my country demanding the right to keep their faces covered when identification is required. So does your choice of religion mean you don't have to follow the rules that rest of us do, that your religion puts you above the law of the land in which you choose to live? What if someone invents their own religion (there are new ones popping up all the time) can they say that ritual murder is part of their beliefs (yes, yes I know murder and face covering is not the same, just pointing out, where do you draw the line, whose belief wins?). This is the little thing that Kratman took to the extreme, saying every time we gave them more rights than we ourselves had, we set ourselves up to be taken over by them. Is he right, is he wrong, I don't know. All I know though, is that I cringed most of the time reading this book, its a pretty ugly read.

Frankly I don't want to get any deeper into this topic, it is too controversial, so I leave it to other readers to make an INFORMED opinion. Yes, I did put that word in caps, much as the world seems determined now to not bother with learning more, to hear the views of both sides, to fact check for yourself if there is any truth in what you read. So if you read this book, be a critical reader, after all this is just one man's views even though he provides us information at the end as to how he came to feel the way he does, it doesn't mean he's right, it doesn't mean he's entirely wrong just because he's not politically correct, but either way, don't take it at face value.

However in the end, the book was just so badly written anyway, any point he wanted to make got lost in my attempts to either stay awake or skip the overly gruesome scenes. You don't need to rape a character in detail 10 different ways to make a point, we got it already!