The Great Smog. London. A dense, choking fog engulfs the city and beneath it, history is re-written…1952. Twelve years have passed since Churchill lost to the appeasers and Britain surrendered to Nazi Germany after Dunkirk. As the long German war against Russia rages on in the east, the British people find themselves under dark authoritarian rule: the press, radio and television are controlled; the streets patrolled by violent auxiliary police and British Jews face ever greater constraints. There are terrible rumours too about what is happening in the basement of the German Embassy at Senate House.

Defiance, though, is growing. In Britain, Winston Churchill's Resistance organization is increasingly a thorn in the government's side. And in a Birmingham mental hospital an incarcerated scientist, Frank Muncaster, may hold a secret that could change the balance of the world struggle for ever. Civil Servant David Fitzgerald, secretly acting as a spy for the Resistance, is given the mission by them to rescue his old friend Frank and get him out of the country.

Before long he, together with a disparate group of Resistance activists, will find themselves fugitives in the midst of London's Great Smog; as David's wife Sarah finds herself drawn into a world more terrifying than she ever could have imagined. And hard on their heels is Gestapo Sturmbannfuhrer Gunther Hoth, brilliant, implacable hunter of men… At once a vivid, haunting reimagining of 1950s Britain, a gripping, humane spy thriller and a poignant love story, with Dominion C. J. Sansom once again asserts himself as the master of the historical novel.

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Product details

Listening Length	20 hours and 46 minutes
Author	C. J. Sansom
Narrator	Daniel Weyman
Whispersync for Voice	Ready
Audible.com.au Release Date	29 October 2012
Publisher	Macmillan Digital Audio
Program Type	Audiobook
Version	Unabridged
Language	English
ASIN	B01MXOOFMW
Best Sellers Rank	20,594 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals) 261 in Alternate History Science Fiction 1,653 in Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals) 2,342 in Fantasy (Audible Books & Originals)

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John Dalzell

better than Sahrdlake?

Reviewed in Australia on 5 May 2014

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If you enjoyed Winter in Madrid, you will love this. Set against the counter-theory of Britain' surrendering to Germany in 1940, the book is a medium-paced but suspenseful spy thriller. Think Tinker Tailor. Light reading but thought-provoking./ Particularly relevant today given the recent surge in support for the UKIP party; perhaps not so fictional.

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Bob of gulf point

Unfinished bore

Reviewed in Australia on 28 January 2018

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Couldn’t finish boring alt history novel

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Graham Sharp Paul

Dull, Dull, Dull

Reviewed in Australia on 2 November 2016

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This was a disappointing read. Endless backgrounding, too little plot, no dramatic tension. I gave up about half-way through. Maybe it got better, but I doubt it.

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Christopher Cox

As good as the Shardlake series

Reviewed in Australia on 12 April 2014

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As always Sanson has created a brilliant story set in a realistic world with believable characters. A great book that I couldn't put down.

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Neil McEwan

Four Stars

Reviewed in Australia on 4 January 2015

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The

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Dominion is not the worst book I have ever read...

Reviewed in Australia on 18 October 2015

Dominion is not the worst novel I have ever read, but it must come pretty close.

In fairness, the author, CJ Sansom, has said that he was being treated for cancer as he was writing the book and it is possible that at times, his mind was not fully on the job. But that doesn’t excuse the lack of any visible sign of an editor.

This is a long, rambling and repetitive novel that seeks to imagine an alternative 1950s Britain in which, after a brief military skirmish in 1939-40, peace was made with Germany and Britain went forward as a peaceful, but unoccupied, ally of the Reich. Sansom goes to enormous length to create this world, but it is not credible. We are expected to believe in Lord Beaverbook as Prime Minister with the likes of Oswald Mosely and Enoch Powell as cabinet ministers. This, I think, misunderstands both men. Mosely was no politician, and Powell was no appeaser.

We have more bizarreness. We are expected to believe in a rise in anti-semitism across Britain with a series of anti-semitic laws and a rounding up of the Jews. This again misunderstands 1940s and 1950s Britain where there was really not a significant anti-semitic feeling, but quite a lot of antipathy towards the Irish.

Natural conversation seems to have died too. In its place, people make statements of historical fact, or repeat stories they have heard on the news, or proffer political opinions. Two men in a bar discuss their support for Government race legislation but express doubts about its likely efficacy rather than discuss the football scores. In a piece de resistance (pun intended – you’ll have to read the book), we have pages long anti-Scottish National Party polemic being placed in the mouth of a mental health nurse, despite the story taking place in England with English people. We are told that the SNP are Nazi sympathisers and thugs and anti-English racists. Not only does this sit badly with the story and context, it jars with the benefits of self-determination being displayed by the characters’ friends and relatives in Canada , New Zealand and the United States .

So to the story itself. A man (Frank) discovers a secret from his brother (Edgar) and this leaves the top brass of all nations wanting to capture him alive. It’s never quite explained how the Americans, the Germans and the British Resistance know that Frank knows the secret; nor why the Americans would want him so badly when they already know the secret. Indeed, those readers with a memory will recall that everyone knows the secret because it was in the newspapers. It seems that CJ Sansom remembers this about 50 pages from the end too as there’s some pretty hasty backtracking and flimsy excuses put forward to explain the inexplicable.

Our reluctant hero, is joined by a motley crew of civil servant spies and other Resistance sleepers, all willing to expose their cover and lay down their lives to save poor Frank, a man of no value to them and with all the survival instincts of a lemming. All the time, they talk in newsreels and political manifestoes, telling us things we already know. It is never enough to see an even from one perspective; we need to have it two or three times.

The Germans, despite being merely friendly allies, seem to have their Gestapo roaming the streets lifting people and dragging them off to the dungeons of their embassy (Senate House - the second tallest building in London as we are told more than once). Except, there’s a bit where it is explained that the Germans can’t actually arrest or interrogate people for fear of creating a diplomatic incident. In which case, why do they have a frequently used suite of torture chambers in their embassy. The rationale changes with the wind. Gunther, the main German, would give Mystic Meg a run for her money. He has a perfect intuition of the moves made by the resistance. He has a 100% record of guessing their motives and thought processes. He even manages to intuit that the people he meets in a flat must (a) have been to visit Frank in hospital; (b) must be in a photograph that looks like it has been moved in Frank’s flat; and (c) are going to escape by submarine. He knows all this by instinct, yet he and his colleagues have been unable to trace the fugitive Winston Churchill who is holed up in Chartwell, his well known stately home in Kent .

This novel goes on and on and on. Half of it is a very protracted chase scene that depends on coincidences, lucky breaks, rescuers appearing in the nick of time. And the other half is backstory about the two dimensional characters who are about to chase each other. It’s hard to care.

If you have a spare 20 hours, donate them to charity. Or repaint your dining room. Or visit a relative you haven’t seen for a while. But please don’t do what I did and waste them reading Dominion.

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D. George

Damn interesting

Reviewed in Australia on 11 November 2017

Frighteningly realistic, which given the thinking behind the tale should not be a surprise. The context is a delight both in the way it is described and used to rationalise the story’s progress. A damn good read!

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Ian Barker

Slow paced and confusing

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 8 December 2017

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Dominion is set in 1952, but in a world where Britain made peace with Germany after Dunkirk and has become a puppet state of the Third Reich. The British government is led by Beaverbrook and Moseley, but things are starting to unravel as there is unrest in the Empire, Hitler is close to death and Churchill leads a resistance movement from hiding.

The book ties real events - like the 1950s London smogs - with the fictional tale of a disillusioned civil servant turned spy, an inmate of a lunatic asylum who holds a deadly secret, and the Gestapo agent sent to track them down.

Unfortunately the pace, at least in the first half of the book, is pedestrian and the timeline is confusing as it uses flashbacks and jumps between characters taking you out of sync with other events. There are also odd spots where the action doesn't quite seem to make sense.

The 'what if the Nazis won the war' idea is always interesting but books like Robert Harris' Fatherland and Len Deighton's SS-GB have done it much better than this.

28 people found this helpful

CaroleQ

friends and strangers are sacrificed in the name of the greater good. Sansom paints a bleak portrait of a period ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 September 2017

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Dominion

It is strange to read a book by CJ Sansom and not to find his traditional character Matthew Shardlake featuring. However as it is set almost 400 years in the future from Tudor England then perhaps it's not that surprising.

Sansom has written an alternative history. It is 1952 and Britain is indirectly controlled by Nazi Germany. Britain sued for peace following the evacuation from Dunkirk and whilst retaining its independence and Empire it is now in thrall to Hitler and the Third Reich. Beaverbrook is Prime Minister, Mosley is Home Secretary and the country is now an authoritarian state. Churchill is a wanted man as he leads the Resistance. Following Nazi pressure British Jews are now being rounded up.

David Fitzgerald is a Civil Servant trying to lead a normal life. However it is a double life as he also works for the Resistance. Not surprisingly he keeps that role a secret. He is contacted by a former friend from university who is seeking assistance. That friend has a secret and it is one that the Nazis are desperate to possess.

It falls to David and others within his resistance group to get his friend to safety. Pursued by a dogmatic Gestapo officer and a careerist British Special Branch Officer they face the full wrath of the state. Families, friends and strangers are sacrificed in the name of the greater good.

Sansom paints a bleak portrait of a period in history best recalled for its actual austerity. He highlights the drabness of an existence that in many ways contributes to a revolt from people of all classes. He highlights what could in all honesty have come to past and as such makes this a really compelling read.

13 people found this helpful

John

Dystopian Britain post WW2 defeat

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 19 July 2019

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As a fan of alternate history, and someone interested in WW2, this appealed to me immediately. Set just over a decade after WW2 ended with surrender in 1940, the book tells the dystopian story of Nazi controlled Britain. Those familiar with the history of the time will recognise peripheral characters such as Beaverbrook and Mosley. Britain is under authoritarian rule, with the press muzzled and focused on pro-German propaganda, and the fate of British Jews hangs in the balance. A resistance organisation fights on, headed by Churchill.

The lead is a civil servant, David Fitzgerald, who is recruited by a friend to work for the resistance. A mutual acquaintance from their university days drags them into a far more dangerous conspiracy than copying documents related to British Dominions – the peace of 1940 allowed Britain to maintain its Empire, whilst Germany controlled Europe. He is pursued by a relentless, brilliant Gestapo man, Gunther Hoth and a Special Branch policeman. A disparate cast of unlikely resistance activists are pulled into the conspiracy as the story moves along.

The story is well written, and I really enjoyed the detail of London in the 1950’s. The characters are deep enough that you care, and I read this very quickly as I wanted to find out what happened next. I have two slight criticisms – firstly, I was hoping for more (maybe that’s not a criticism). I felt the wrap-up was all a bit quick. Without wanting to risk spoilers, I was hoping for more from this well created world – the ending precludes any sequels. The second point is the way the story jumps around – it follows a character for several days (or longer), then moves onto another and you move back in time those several days which I found quite jarring. My preference is to proceed broadly sequentially and move between the characters more often. However, I’m sure Sansom had his reasons.

Overall I highly recommend this book. As I said, I’m a bit disappointed there won’t be more works set in this extremely well crafted alternate Britain.

6 people found this helpful

Virtual Methodist

I thought that Sansom would take this in an interesting direction given that I love his Shardlake books

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 21 January 2018

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This has an intriguing start point, and whilst the "what if the Nazis won the war" trope has been done before, I thought that Sansom would take this in an interesting direction given that I love his Shardlake books, but it was sadly disappointing. It was curiously old-fashioned and whilst that might have been a function of the author trying to conjure up the period, this, combined with what seemed cut and paste characters and a series of scenarios that felt forced, including an anti-climactic denouement added to my frustration.

10 people found this helpful

WLangcake

Not Shardlake but still absorbing .

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 20 July 2019

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If ,like me ,you have read the Shardlake books then it's best to put them right out of your mind before tackling this .It's an excellent book ,very well written ,but nothing like the Tudor detective series .Some reviews have pointed to the length of the book and the slightly old fashioned style as drawbacks ,neither was the case for me .The slow-ish pace at the beginning gives you time to appreciate the details and atmosphere of this alternative timeline and allows you to get to know the characters in some depth .The slightly old fashioned tone suits the story and in no way detracted from it for me .This is not a book for the impatient ,you are not going to get to the meat straight away ,but if you can handle a more leisured pace and in depth writing you will probably find this cross between spy thriller and alternative history very satisfying .The story is told from the perspective of several characters and political view points ,I actually found myself feeling some sympathy for one of the "Bad guys " .For me this added to the richness of the book but I can see that it might irritate those who like to follow a single character or like the good / bad divide a lot more clearly defined .I found the plot absorbing and most of the characters enjoyable if not always likeable .Given that it's currently available on Kindle for less than £1 ,it's well worth giving it a shot .

3 people found this helpful

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