Friar skillfully blends history, and social theory with scientific imagining to portray the rise of the new republic, which has been planned down to the tiniest details. Social transformation, expansionist diplomacy and a war of conquest fought with fantastic new weaponry all unfold simultaneously. The new society being planned has both profound similarities and significant differences with Hitler’s third Reich. Nationalist propaganda, in the tradition of Leni Riefenstahl’s film Triumph of the Will (a film commissioned by Hitler to glorify the Third Reich) is used effectively by Geiseric to begin the expansion of a new German empire. Although the regime is as ruthless as its predecessors, it is not anti-Semitic. Geiseric chooses to recruit Israel and exploit Jewish talent instead of engaging in Jewish genocide. His “new republic” is vegetarian (Vegan) and highly paternalistic, ruling the conquered slave population through propaganda, ample life amenities, and a drink called “ambrosia.”

The most ingenious (and in some ways most disturbing) element of the book is the evolution and use of new classes of super weapons developed by the new regime. Geiseric’s regime, the Apex, employs high tech bio-mimicry to create war chariots that hover like humming birds, ships that move like sea creatures and tanks that gallop on all fours. The Juggernaut, a giant tentacle machine ravages the coasts of resisting nations. Geiseric’s armored warriors look much like ancient knights as they cruise above battlefields in airborne Kolibri war chariots. All the war technology is lavishly illustrated in a high sci-fi style that will appeal to military science fiction fans.

Although the 2030s seems a little early for these fantastic technologies to be operative, it is possible that the author did not want to make the Fourth Reich too distantly removed from the Third—severing some of the historical causality that might have been more problematic if he had placed the action in, say, the 2090s.

The timeline of The Keepers follows the new empire from its early acquisition of Austria to its successful conquest of the United States, and the retreat of the American and British forces to Mars and the moon, leaving only a small underground movement behind. As Geiseric enlarges his empire, subverting and outwitting the allies at every turn, the reader is treated to a lavish spectacle that is fascinating, overwhelming, and somewhat alienating—as if one is watching important events from a great height at which individuals seem insignificant. While he does trace the lives of one small group of conquered people throughout the period of conquest, they seem like tiny pieces of flotsam in a tsunami, with no power to change or influence their destinies.

If there is a weakness in the logic of Geiseric’s conquest, it is that it is hard to see where the resources for all these rapid worldwide conquests come from. Even as Geiseric usurps the assets of conquered lands, it is difficult to understand how he could mobilize and redirect these resources swiftly enough to facilitate his rapid world conquest, which takes far less time, than say, the conquests of Alexander the Great. Even Hitler’s panzers moved more rapidly than the system that manufactured and supplied them. That said, The Keepers is a pretty impressive piece of speculative fiction—written plausibly, dramatically and comprehensively in prose that is better than one often finds in books of this kind. If speculative future history and hard military science fiction appeal to you, this is a book you are sure to enjoy.