Diverge and Conquer (Look to the West Book 1)

History can turn on the smallest of things. In the history we know, King George II’s son Prince Frederick was an obscure footnote of history. Hated by his father (who threatened to exile him to the American colonies), his political career cut short when he was fatally struck by a cricket ball, of all things. The Prince never became King Fred and instead the throne passed to his inexperienced son, George III, who proceeded to lose America.

But what if one tiny slight—a trip on a coronation carpet, a misplaced laugh—had tipped George II over the edge and he had made good on his threat? What if, in the year George Washington was born, the American colonies had found themselves home to an exiled Prince stripped of his inheritance? And what if that Prince had ambitions to reclaim his birthright by any means necessary, including with the help of his colonial subjects…?

The Look to the West series begins with the story of Frederick and the very different America that results from his exile, but it is a tale that encompasses the whole world. Every action we take has unforeseen impacts: a revolutionary South America, a defeated Prussia, a divided India, a European Enlightenment transformed by phlogiston theory, Cugnot steam engines and Linnaeus’ Theory of Evolution. Diverge and Conquer covers the history of this world from the time of Frederick to the era when Europe is torn apart by a French Revolution very different to the one we know—and hints at a mysterious future to come…