After the Downfall [Hardcover]

Harry Turtledove (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 23, 2008

1945: Russian troops have entered Berlin, and are engaged in a violent orgy of robbery, rape, and revenge! Wehrmacht officer Hasso Pemsel, a career soldier on the losing end of the greatest war in history, flees from a sniper's bullet, finding himself hurled into a mysterious, fantastic world of wizards, dragons, and unicorns!

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Alternate historian Turtledove (The Man with the Iron Heart) opens this fantasy with Hasso Pemsel, a tough Wehrmacht captain, cornered in a Berlin museum as the Russians close in. Pemsel falls into another world, where he promptly rescues beautiful blonde half-goddess Velona from three swarthy men. Velona seduces him and explains that the blond Lenelli invaders rule over the dark native Grenye, keeping them subjugated with magic. Experienced from fighting on the Russian front, Hasso brings modern military ideas to the Lenelli before they invade the Grenye stronghold of Bucovin, but when the Grenye capture him, conversations with intelligent, lovely high priestess Drepteaza start to erode his assumptions about both races. Pemsel's slow enlightenment breaks no new ground, but his story will appeal to fans of Turtledove's straightforward style and military know-how. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

An ancient relic flings Germany army captain Hasso Pemsel from the ruins of doomed Berlin to a fantastic though also war-torn other world. There he falls among the tall, blond Lenelli and in love with their goddess incarnate, Velona. At first he willingly helps the Lenelli in their war against the short, dark, barbarian Grenye, but soon he sees that his friends are making the same mistakes that the Third Reich did in its death-duel with the Russians. He knows where that course leads. After the Grenye capture him, it becomes even clearer to him that any war of extermination is a bad idea, but this one is especially so because Velona uses her magic to try to terminate him for sleeping with Grenye women. When he genuinely falls for one of the latter, the die is cast. He develops gunpowder, equips the Grenye with dragon-bone amulets to resist enemy magic, and discovers wizardly powers of his own. Modest by Turtledove’s standards but intelligently carried out. --Roland Green

Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: Night Shade Books; First Edition edition (September 23, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1597801305
• ISBN-13: 978-1597801300
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.4 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,110,327 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Alternate History as Allegory- Turtledove strikes again!, September 21, 2008

By 

Walt Boyes "Walt Boyes" (Aurora IL USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: After the Downfall (Hardcover)

Harry Turtledove posits a typical Nazi soldier, in the last days of the defense of Berlin in 1945...Hasso Pemsel...who is supposed to defend to the death the ruins of the old Berlin Museum. All of the antiquities have supposedly been taken to safety in bunkers, but he finds a big rock that he hides behind, taking refuge from the Russian sharpshooters. He sees the information sign is still there, and it says that the big rock is the Omphalos stone, from the temple of Apollo at Delphi. He crawls on top of it and disappears.

He of course, reappears in an alternate reality...sort of a cross between Andre Norton's first Witch World novel and A Connecticut Yankee, with gorgeous Goddess priestess, who literally throws herself on her back and spreads her legs for him.

The story is an allegory about the Nazis and the way their beliefs about "untermenschen" made them vulnerable to the Russians, and by extension, to the Jews they were so busy exterminating.

Pemsel first works for King Bottero, whose tall, blonde people have invaded and subjugated the smaller, darker Grenye. All except for the nation of Bucovin. Bucovin is Russia without the communism...and its leader, Lord Zgomat, is a dead ringer for Lev Trotsky had he lived to run Russia.

Pemsel teaches the Lenelli what they are willing to learn about new tactics, and they initially have success in invading Bucovin. Then Pemsel is captured.

His Nazi nose is rubbed into the fact that the Lenelli are not kindly conquerors, and that the Bucovins are fighting to save their lives and their homes-- and are just as much people as the Lenelli, or as Pemsel himself, is...or, he reflects, as the Jews in his vanished home world must be.

There's lots of action to cloak the allegory, and Turtledove is at his best in his characters... King Bottero is Mussolini in a big blonde way, for example. There are the two noncoms...one Lenello, Orosei, and one Bucovin, Rautat, who are really well drawn three-dimensional characters.

This is one of Turtledove's best books in a while.

I strongly recommend it.

Walt Boyes
Associate Editor
Jim Baen's Universe magazine
www.baens-universe.com

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In a magic world a nazi officer gets a 2nd chance to choose right or wrong, October 30, 2008

By 

Marshall Lord (Whitehaven, UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: After the Downfall (Hardcover)

Another exploration by Harry Turtledove of what happens when people who are not wholly evil find themselves fighting on the wrong side, and of whether there is anything they can do about it ...

The story begins as the Russians are over-running Berlin in 1945. Wehrmacht officer Hasso Pemsel and what's left of his once-proud unit are in the City Museum, surrounded by overwhelming numbers of tough Red Army soldiers who have a score to settle with the Germans after what the Nazis did to Russia.

In between dodging bullets in what he expects to be his last minutes of life, Hasso notes an inscription on an ancient stone which gives him the impression that the stone was supposed to be a gateway to other worlds. As an act of gallows humour, he sits on it - and his astonished Feldwebel sees him disappear. The NCO leaps, too late, for the stone himself, only to be cut down by Russian bullets. To the advancing Red Army soldiers who loot and rush past his body it is only another stone.

Hasso Pemsel finds himself in a completely different place - and the first thing he sees is a tall, magnificently beautiful, blonde woman fleeing from three men, armed with crude weapons, who are pursuing her with obviously hostile intent. Without thinking he acts to rescue her, and this is not too difficult as his sub-machine gun works perfectly in this new world (at least while it still has ammunition.)

The lady insists on thanking Hasso, there and then, in the most intimate way that a beautiful woman can thank a man for saving her life, and then shows him the way to her people's capital.

As he learns their language, Hasso discovers that this is a world of magicians, spells and unicorns, but no technology. His lady friend is regarded by her people as a Goddess incarnate - a bit like the Dalai Llama, except that this woman is much sexier and has nothing to do with non-violence. Her people are engaged in a war to the death with another nation, and welcome him as a recruit to their army who can advise on more effective ways to fight the enemy.

But Hasso soon becomes uncomfortable with the atrocities which his new country inflicts on anyone who gets in their way - crimes which his actions in winning battles for them are helping to bring about.

As Hasso's concern grows, both at the evils he sees and the overconfidence of his new comrades, he also begins to look with a new light at the actions of his former country, Nazi Germany. Has he again found himself on the wrong side, and is his new country going down the same evil course to disaster ?

Definately one of Harry Turtledove's better and more imaginative works - almost as good as "The Guns of the South." Strongly recommended.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Fantasy Romania, September 21, 2009

By 

T. Rogers - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: After the Downfall (Hardcover)

As other reviewers have mentioned, this book is interesting because a Wehrmacht officer from oour world becomes aware of his prejudices by visiting another world. The funny thing to me about the book is that Bucovin and Suceava are place names in Romania! The Grenye characters have names whose Romanian meanings sometimes fit the characterization (Drepteaza) and sometimes have little or nothing to do with the personality at all (Zgomot! Gunoiul! Otset! and others). I was interested in the story of how our hero dealt with his challenges, and didn't want to go to sleep until I had finished reading it. If you get the paperback edition, it is certainly worth the money, or if the hard cover is on sale. At full price? This is not the sort of literature that one feels compelled to re-read, in terms of sword and sorcery novels. Dar ma bucur c'am citit-o.