A review by kathrynkao
Estados Unidos de Japón by Peter Tieryas

5.0

This book is completely gripping and immersive. Tieryas creates an entirely new world that feels rich and lived in, told from the perspective of characters in the United States of Japan army. The characters are fully developed and fascinating, and when the book jumps from the present to various points in the past, it reveals even more about the characters. I really loved how there are hints throughout that maybe our history and the book's pre-WWII history aren't totally aligned. It makes the Americans more ambiguous, which made the story much more than USJ bad/Americans good. I'm studying for my Social Studies Single Subject certification exam, and reading this book while studying world history in general and WWII in particular really added to the experience.

My only complaint is that the ending is more open-ended than I would like. I would be thrilled if a sequel, set a decade or two after the events in the book, would pick things up from the ending. I wasn't ready for the book to be over, and I was expecting to learn what kind of dent in USJ leadership and control the events of the book had.