Underground Airlines

Meh, OK, fine. Another alternative US spec fic book, in the style of this: i.e. another book tackling America's original sin (here, slavery) through a flashy gimmick (here, slavery never ended, the Civil War never happened) that doesn't have as much substance as its promised style implies.

I mean, it was OK - but I feel like I could have LOVED it. The plot: In modern day America, a man named Victor is tracking a runaway slave. Victor himself escaped from the plantations in the South, only to be captured by the US Marshalls a few years later and turned into a double-agent. He now tries to ferret out “Underground Airlines” operatives; i.e. the hidden cross-country network of people trying to get free, and people trying to help them. With false identities and a handler back in Gaithersburg, MD, Victor acts as a bounty hunter for runaways - finding them and sending them back. He is also, unsurprisingly, a super grim dude. It was only very late in the story that I realized how much the book is modeled on a private eye/detective story. Yeah, yeah, I know. DUH. Anyway, there's the “foxy damsel in distress” archetype via the character of Martha, the white mom with an African-American kid; there's the “cynical mobster” archetype via a ruthless abolitionist priest; and so on. Yadda yadda.I dunno. Ben Winters, the author (who is a white guy btw - it shouldn't matter, of course, but it kinda does?), drops a lot of giant, not-nuanced ALTERNATIVE AMERICAN HISTORY things that are normally the best part of alt universe spec fic, but here felt heavy-handed and hum-drum. I could never really buy Victor, the main character, though I did LOVE all his “assuming false identities” stuff - and BIG kudos to the reader (since I did the audiobook of this), William DeMeritt, who was PHENOMENAL and should win an Audie Award. a friend recently told me that people try to stay away from calling people “slaves” and instead refer to them as “enslaved people”; is that a thing? i agree that it definitely sounds better, more humanizing. Or is this the euphemism treadmill?