Last month's book vote threw up a rather strange result, and caused quite a lot of chatter on our forum, and on a number of forums across the internet. Now, when I was setting up the book vote for the month I had no idea that it was going to cause such a fuss - on paper it was pretty straight forward. It had been a while since we had offered up a selection of Campaign titles to fight it out, so I trawled through nearly 300 suggestions submitted over the previous month, picking out 5 titles.

I chose Talavera, Singapore, the Easter Offensive, Fallen Timbers and Troy. From that list I firmly believed that Troy probably didn't stand much of a chance. For years the Napoleonic community have been howling that we need a book on Talavera - helped no doubt by Sharpe! Fallen Timbers is another one of those titles that we have been asked for a great deal - in fact someone out there votes for it at least three times a month. Singapore very recently emerged as one of the largest holes in our coverage of World War II - and there are not many of those out there. Vietnam books have never really done very well in our previous book votes, but with the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan and the obvious connections being made between that war and Vietnam I figured the Easter Offensive could be a bit of a dark horse - the outsider that might come in from the outside and nick a close win.

Boy was I wrong. Usually our book votes are pretty close, separated by only a couple of percent - normally no more than a few hundred votes apart at the very most. It is rare for a title to get much more than 40% of the vote, particularly when it is surrounded by equally matched titles.

Troy however completely upset the norm - and blew away the competition, pulling in 60% of the total votes cast. Not only that, but we had 30% more votes than we usually get on our book vote. There was a higher incidence of people voting more than once than is usual (naughty multiple voters!) but even pulling out those numbers Troy was a run away winner.

So why did Troy win?

In the past we have been given a bit of stick for publishing Campaigns on subjects where source material is a bit thin on the ground, and in fact I do remember a couple of conversations about how this particular battle seemed to lean more towards the myth end of the historical spectrum - something that was pointed out when we covered Troy in the Fortress series. So, what do you think, why did Troy win so overwhelmingly last month, and do you think we can realistically put together a book on the subject?

On a related note, this month our book vote shifts over to the Duel series, with 5 rather interesting possibilities up there. With the ongoing Falklands controversy in the news I am holding the torch for the Duel pitting the Sea Harrier against the Dagger, but I suspect the allure of World War II desert warfare might be too much for even the Harrier!