Nightmare

SM Stirling's Domination of the Draka is like a nightmare from which it is impossible to wake up:

when the Draka military governor of northern France and her staff are poisoned at a banquet, ten thousand serfs are impaled along the avenues of Paris;

when Barcelonans rise and kill hundreds of Citizens, the city is nuked;

Finnish and Russian partisans are hunted like animals;

Draka children throw rocks at a "saboteur" starving to death in an iron cage hanging at an intersection;

when India withdraws from the Alliance for Democracy, it is immediately invaded and falls under the Yoke.

In the case of the "saboteur," there are two injustices: torturing a man to death and raising children to participate. It is good to know that, despite such systematic barbarism, some OSS agents remain willing to infiltrate the Domination and there is still an underground resistance willing to cooperate with them. We unreservedly enjoy reading about these people whereas the Snakes leave a nasty taste in the mouth.

(I wrote this post on Saturday evening but am posting it on Monday morning because Lancaster has had floods and a blackout.)