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Empires Lost #1
England Expects
An alternate cover edition can be found here.
Wartime England: June, 1940.
France has fallen with 300,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force taken prisoner trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk. Edward VIII still reigns and mourns the death of his mistress, Wallis Simpson.
Left with almost no troops, guns or tanks, Britain stands alone against the might of a German Wehrmacht armed with assault rifles, main battle tanks, aircraft carriers and a pair of 'superguns' firing seven tonne shells across the English Channel.
Day after day, Squadron Leader Alec Trumbull and a fast-dwindling number of broken veterans and inexperienced new-recruits take to the skies against the seemingly endless streams of German aircraft. His Spitfire damaged in the heat of battle and pursued by enemy fighters he can’t outrun, Trumbull is saved at the last moment by a strange jet aircraft that can land and take off vertically. He discovered that the advanced aircraft belongs to the Hindsight Unit: a UN task force from the 21st Century sent to combat a group of Neo-Nazis also returned from the future to aid Nazi Germany wins the Second World War. As technology accelerates and events begin to spiral out of control, Trumbull finds himself drawn into Hindsight’s desperate struggle to prevent a seemingly inevitable invasion of Great Britain and return history to its true course.
Wartime England: June, 1940.
France has fallen with 300,000 men of the British Expeditionary Force taken prisoner trapped on the beaches of Dunkirk. Edward VIII still reigns and mourns the death of his mistress, Wallis Simpson.
Left with almost no troops, guns or tanks, Britain stands alone against the might of a German Wehrmacht armed with assault rifles, main battle tanks, aircraft carriers and a pair of 'superguns' firing seven tonne shells across the English Channel.
Day after day, Squadron Leader Alec Trumbull and a fast-dwindling number of broken veterans and inexperienced new-recruits take to the skies against the seemingly endless streams of German aircraft. His Spitfire damaged in the heat of battle and pursued by enemy fighters he can’t outrun, Trumbull is saved at the last moment by a strange jet aircraft that can land and take off vertically. He discovered that the advanced aircraft belongs to the Hindsight Unit: a UN task force from the 21st Century sent to combat a group of Neo-Nazis also returned from the future to aid Nazi Germany wins the Second World War. As technology accelerates and events begin to spiral out of control, Trumbull finds himself drawn into Hindsight’s desperate struggle to prevent a seemingly inevitable invasion of Great Britain and return history to its true course.
850 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2011
45 people are currently reading
38 people want to read
About the author
Charles S. Jackson
5 books12 followersCharles Jackson lives with his wife and daughter in Sydney, Australia.
He works full time to help pay the bills and spends his spare time writing speculative fiction.
Beginning his lifelong love of writing at the age of twelve with the completion of his first attempt at a full-length novel, he has been an avid writer ever since.
His interests include reading, music, movies and online gaming, and has had many different and varied experiences in life ranging from performance in amateur stage productions to service as a private in the Australian Army Reserve and, more recently, the most strenuous and rewarding experience of all: parenthood.
He works full time to help pay the bills and spends his spare time writing speculative fiction.
Beginning his lifelong love of writing at the age of twelve with the completion of his first attempt at a full-length novel, he has been an avid writer ever since.
His interests include reading, music, movies and online gaming, and has had many different and varied experiences in life ranging from performance in amateur stage productions to service as a private in the Australian Army Reserve and, more recently, the most strenuous and rewarding experience of all: parenthood.
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
July 19, 2013
"the RAF pilot was quickly becoming desensitised to surprise to the point of simple acceptance...most things he’d seen that day had been unlike anything he’d seen before and he’d basically used up his capacity for amazement to the point that he was willing to hold it in check until some suitable explanations had been provided."
There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best alternate history novel I have ever read. Very long, which is great and with only a few minor proofing errors, it's evident that the author loves the subject and knows his topic and period in exquisite detail. This book is clearly a labour of love, and I admire the detail, the reality and the prose to the point where I went out and bought more copies, just to show my support for the author (which I would of course have been less inclined to do if it had cost more). Still, the sequel will be hear soon and I can honestly say that a fivefold increase in price wouldn't put me off in the slightest: the amount you get and the quality of the material is nothing short of astounding.
“I badly needed to remember where I’d come from... remember what I’d left behind.”
This book also packs emotion. The thirteenth chapter and the date of August 17 1940 haunted me for ages, and the sobriety and solemnity of the post mortems also impacted greatly. Something about the way this book is written somehow captured and held me and, for all that I've been doing other things than reading over the last week, my mind has been at the Orkneys, in German airspace, and savoring each salvo in this war.
Trumbull's introduction to Hindsight is extremely exciting of course, but the impact of it from the other side of the fence in chapter 15 is unparalleled. And as if superb and engaging writing in both the aforementioned chapters hadn't utterly captivated me enough, the actual invasion is also spectacular and left me dry-mouthed.
"Of course, there was always the occasional possibility of random chance or the unpredictability of others, a perfect case in point being the circumstances of that night ultimately leading to the rather inconvenient fact that he was now quite definitely deceased."
The other characters are also quite intriguing; Schiller especially comes into his own as the story develops and I'm almost tempted to reread it, so I can focus more on him in the earlier parts of the book. Brandis somehow didn't quite strike the same chord, so Rupert's future actions will be most interesting to observe now that things have been set in motion there.
One reviewer of this book pointed out the "Huge" nuclear revelation. Somehow, I wasn't too surprised by it myself, I think because of the temporal effects on aging which sort of put me on the lookout for changes to ongoing natural processes. Still, there's no doubt it had a massive impact on the story and it was handled brilliantly.
Downsides? Well, every book has them. For me, the abbreviations - street, road etc were used inconsistently and I'd have preferred they werent used at all. But that's really a tiny quibble on a work of such scope and length that it's hard to take the issue seriously.
"Will there ever be a time now when anyone looks on a German without fear?"
The devastation and damage done is certainly huge in this novel and the impact heavily felt. I'm not ashamed to say that I also shed a tear as Eileen performed the requiem for the character I'm deliberately not naming so as not to spoil anything. The writing was - beautiful and heartfelt and painful. Truly, if you'll pardon the excursion in a nod to my regular readers, an Eolian moment.
I am eagerly awaiting the sequel and seeing where everything ends up and ties together will hopefully keep me coming back for many more books to come. Thank you, Mr Jackson.
There is no doubt in my mind that this is the best alternate history novel I have ever read. Very long, which is great and with only a few minor proofing errors, it's evident that the author loves the subject and knows his topic and period in exquisite detail. This book is clearly a labour of love, and I admire the detail, the reality and the prose to the point where I went out and bought more copies, just to show my support for the author (which I would of course have been less inclined to do if it had cost more). Still, the sequel will be hear soon and I can honestly say that a fivefold increase in price wouldn't put me off in the slightest: the amount you get and the quality of the material is nothing short of astounding.
“I badly needed to remember where I’d come from... remember what I’d left behind.”
This book also packs emotion. The thirteenth chapter and the date of August 17 1940 haunted me for ages, and the sobriety and solemnity of the post mortems also impacted greatly. Something about the way this book is written somehow captured and held me and, for all that I've been doing other things than reading over the last week, my mind has been at the Orkneys, in German airspace, and savoring each salvo in this war.
Trumbull's introduction to Hindsight is extremely exciting of course, but the impact of it from the other side of the fence in chapter 15 is unparalleled. And as if superb and engaging writing in both the aforementioned chapters hadn't utterly captivated me enough, the actual invasion is also spectacular and left me dry-mouthed.
"Of course, there was always the occasional possibility of random chance or the unpredictability of others, a perfect case in point being the circumstances of that night ultimately leading to the rather inconvenient fact that he was now quite definitely deceased."
The other characters are also quite intriguing; Schiller especially comes into his own as the story develops and I'm almost tempted to reread it, so I can focus more on him in the earlier parts of the book. Brandis somehow didn't quite strike the same chord, so Rupert's future actions will be most interesting to observe now that things have been set in motion there.
One reviewer of this book pointed out the "Huge" nuclear revelation. Somehow, I wasn't too surprised by it myself, I think because of the temporal effects on aging which sort of put me on the lookout for changes to ongoing natural processes. Still, there's no doubt it had a massive impact on the story and it was handled brilliantly.
Downsides? Well, every book has them. For me, the abbreviations - street, road etc were used inconsistently and I'd have preferred they werent used at all. But that's really a tiny quibble on a work of such scope and length that it's hard to take the issue seriously.
"Will there ever be a time now when anyone looks on a German without fear?"
The devastation and damage done is certainly huge in this novel and the impact heavily felt. I'm not ashamed to say that I also shed a tear as Eileen performed the requiem for the character I'm deliberately not naming so as not to spoil anything. The writing was - beautiful and heartfelt and painful. Truly, if you'll pardon the excursion in a nod to my regular readers, an Eolian moment.
I am eagerly awaiting the sequel and seeing where everything ends up and ties together will hopefully keep me coming back for many more books to come. Thank you, Mr Jackson.
September 1, 2013
His first novel, Charles Jackson's speculative recounting of an alternate WWII is an impressive feat. In the novel, travelers from 2010 have gone back to lead the Third Reich's military and industry to victory where it had been defeat. Advance warning from the UN and the fortunate capture of two of the Neo-Nazis' transport aircraft enable a small strike force to mobilize to the past in the hopes of correcting the flow of time before the present is rewritten.
This is an impressive story, but suffers from reading more like a history and technical text in many places. To be fair, the author must have done an amazing amount of research to develop the story and know what elements were in play from 1933-1940 and how other advances learned in the post-war years and sixty years worth of retrospective might have altered the course of history. That being said, it is a very tedious read if you aren't a fan of historical war fiction.
Dynamic and engaging characters with an intriguing storyline and a well-developed world suffer amidst pages of in-depth description of the exact specifications of specific pieces of technology and the history - both in the real world and in the alternative history - create excessive bloat. The rather ironic and irritating problem that arises is initials and abbreviations taken as for granted without any particular in-text hints - for instance, "2IC" as "second in command" and 7RTR for the seventh Royal Tank Regimen.
I admit that I'm biased against this book because this isn't the sort of fiction I normally read. The synopsis that captured my interest is far less weighted with the overall historical context. Perhaps those who are fans of war fiction and are WWII history buffs will consider what I found to be stumbling blocks to be non-issues.
What is more damning, though, and what cemented the two-star rating rather than a three is that the book DOES have compelling characters and an intriguing storyline within what was intended as a continuum of books, but the author apparently did not continue with the series. Because of this, the questions left unanswered remain unanswered with no sign of follow-up. If I'm wrong in this, please let me know via comment so that I can find the rest - as painful of a slog as this book was for me, I still would like to know the outcome for the characters after the conclusion of the book.
Ultimately, a huge amount of promise lost between superfluous text and a failure to seize on the assets that were constructed.
This is an impressive story, but suffers from reading more like a history and technical text in many places. To be fair, the author must have done an amazing amount of research to develop the story and know what elements were in play from 1933-1940 and how other advances learned in the post-war years and sixty years worth of retrospective might have altered the course of history. That being said, it is a very tedious read if you aren't a fan of historical war fiction.
Dynamic and engaging characters with an intriguing storyline and a well-developed world suffer amidst pages of in-depth description of the exact specifications of specific pieces of technology and the history - both in the real world and in the alternative history - create excessive bloat. The rather ironic and irritating problem that arises is initials and abbreviations taken as for granted without any particular in-text hints - for instance, "2IC" as "second in command" and 7RTR for the seventh Royal Tank Regimen.
I admit that I'm biased against this book because this isn't the sort of fiction I normally read. The synopsis that captured my interest is far less weighted with the overall historical context. Perhaps those who are fans of war fiction and are WWII history buffs will consider what I found to be stumbling blocks to be non-issues.
What is more damning, though, and what cemented the two-star rating rather than a three is that the book DOES have compelling characters and an intriguing storyline within what was intended as a continuum of books, but the author apparently did not continue with the series. Because of this, the questions left unanswered remain unanswered with no sign of follow-up. If I'm wrong in this, please let me know via comment so that I can find the rest - as painful of a slog as this book was for me, I still would like to know the outcome for the characters after the conclusion of the book.
Ultimately, a huge amount of promise lost between superfluous text and a failure to seize on the assets that were constructed.
September 13, 2017
Needs an editor
Very much enjoyed the plot, but the book badly needs an editor. Lots of spelling and grammatical errors. Lots of repeated waffle.
Very much enjoyed the plot, but the book badly needs an editor. Lots of spelling and grammatical errors. Lots of repeated waffle.
January 1, 2019
Extremely interesting concept
This was a fascinating book to read with an original twist. Can only get better in the other books. Well worth a read.
This was a fascinating book to read with an original twist. Can only get better in the other books. Well worth a read.
March 23, 2019
A great read on alternate history. Very believable and unable to put down!
October 10, 2019
Great read keeps you enthralled
November 27, 2025
Good story
This is the first in a series of alternative history books. The story is interesting so far. But, it has been a while since e I've seen so many typos in a book.
This is the first in a series of alternative history books. The story is interesting so far. But, it has been a while since e I've seen so many typos in a book.
February 17, 2018
Alternate history with a gripping plot? What more could you want from such a book? Yes admittedly there are some grammatical errors. Look beyond these and you will find an excellent read with characters that will leave you wanting to find out more about them.
September 13, 2013
I love second world war books but books such as fartherland didn't really impress me so I wasn't sure wwhat I would think of this book.
I couldn't put it down. From the very beginning I was hooked. The plot, the style of writing and the overall atmousphere created by the author made this novel a page turner from start to finish. The characters all have their own back stories which emerge over the course of this book and are filtered in to the story in just the right way.
There are also some very amusing scenes in this book and at the end a very poinient scene which brought a tear to the eye as I read.
I can't recommend this book enough!
I couldn't put it down. From the very beginning I was hooked. The plot, the style of writing and the overall atmousphere created by the author made this novel a page turner from start to finish. The characters all have their own back stories which emerge over the course of this book and are filtered in to the story in just the right way.
There are also some very amusing scenes in this book and at the end a very poinient scene which brought a tear to the eye as I read.
I can't recommend this book enough!
July 30, 2013
This is the first really long (800+ pages) book that I kept reading and reading and reading....., in spite of the questionable quality of the book over all. I guess I'm a sucker for speculative history in a big way. I kept going in anticipation of what I thought the ending should be, and it wasn't to be. OK story, some interesting characters, and a lot of technical and historical revelations, just wasn't enough to hope there might be a sequel. England vs Germany, time travel, modern day technology in use in 1940, blah blah blah.......
February 21, 2013
Long
But good
Technical data on some of the military equipment may be too much for some
My bulls*** meter only got close to going off once or twice
But good
Technical data on some of the military equipment may be too much for some
My bulls*** meter only got close to going off once or twice
August 18, 2015
Great time travel alternate history
I loved the premise . I found this as enjoyable as John Birminghams' Axis of time trilogy, 1st book in this series didn't disappoint.
I loved the premise . I found this as enjoyable as John Birminghams' Axis of time trilogy, 1st book in this series didn't disappoint.
August 12, 2017
A new slant on history
Enjoyed it no end ,a gripping story merging with real facts on the war looking forward to reading the next book to srr how the characters get on
Enjoyed it no end ,a gripping story merging with real facts on the war looking forward to reading the next book to srr how the characters get on
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews