Customer Reviews

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(24)
3 star:		(19)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the second book in the American Empire series. It is also a much better one than the first. It does, however, have many of the previous book's faults.

The improvement between this book and the first in the series is very noticeable. However, it is difficult to quantify. One of my main complaints against the first book was that the "alternate" part of this history was too reminiscent of real history: the Freedom Party was a poor man's Nazi Party, the massive inflation that hit the Confederacy was exactly the way it happened in real-world Germany after the First World War. The Center Cannot Hold does a much better job of making things different and interesting. There is a rebellion in Canada, tensions start flaring up between the Japanese and the United States. A civil war erupts in Mexico. All of this is wonderful news to the alternate history fan. This is what we like. Sure, some events are still the same (the Freedom Party is still the Nazi party, the Depression happens just like it did in reality), but there are enough differences this time to make it harder to guess what's going to happen.

With all that being said, there are still numerous faults in this book, which makes it so that I have to qualify my recommendation. The writing is still very bland and boring at times. Turtledove still has an annoying habit of emphasizing things by repeating them. Every time we see Nellie Jacobs, there is some reference to her having killed the father or her oldest daughter in the previous series. There is always a reference to how she really distrusts men, with the occasional reference to how this isn't quite always the case with her current husband, but still is most of the time. It gets really old, really fast. It gets even older if you've been reading the series since the beginning and getting this every time Nellie appears in the book. The constant re-introduction of Turtledove's characters is his main writing fault, I believe. I know that there are a lot of characters to keep track of, but either he should trust the reader to be able to keep track or lessen the number of characters in the book.

Secondly, some of the characters are still beyond useless and very uninteresting in the bargain. I'll go back to Nellie again. I have no idea where her storyline is going, but her entire family has to be the most annoying and boring characters around. Their story doesn't seem to have anything to do with the ongoing story in the book. This wouldn't be so bad if they were intriguing in some way, but they aren't. They're just there, and they bring the book to a screeching halt every time they appear. There is some sign at the end of the book that they may finally play some small part in the next book. I hope that's true, as maybe they might finally get interesting.

Thankfully, most of the other characters have developed some sort of interesting story. The intention seems to be to illustrate various aspects of life during this time period, and a reaction to the national events that happen. Chester Martin, for example, is the everyman who has to deal with the Depression on the ground. There are a couple of black characters who seem to be in the book mainly to give a black perspective to the rise of the Freedom Party. At least they are interesting characters as well. Turtledove is not afraid to kill some of his characters off, so you're never sure exactly what's going to happen to them. One of the deaths, in fact, is so out of the blue that I initially wondered if Turtledove just couldn't find anything to do with him. I then realized that it illustrated something about what was going on, and I admired Turtledove a lot more for it. While he kills some of his characters off, he also introduces some new ones. So far, these seem better then some of his original characters.

The final problem, and I have a feeling it's going to be a problem in the next book as well (it was a big one in the previous book) is that it covers such a long period of time that it seems very disjointed. This book covers events from 1924 to 1933. A lot of events happen offstage and we only see a reaction to them in hindsight. Thus, there is no real flow to the book. A clear indication of this is the last few chapters. These chapters all take place in 1932-33 and talk about the coming election in the Confederacy, and the United States' reaction to it. These chapters are gripping, even as you know what's going to happen. There's a pace to them, a tension that makes you want to finish them. This is missing from the earlier chapters, and definitely indicates the problem.

Thus, I must qualify my recommendation for this book. It's much better than the first. However, if you don't have an interest in alternate history (or even history in general, as I think this series would be of interest to the historian), then the writing of this book will really turn you off. As it is, you have to almost ignore it because you want to know what's going to happen next. This series seems to be doing almost nothing but setting up the coming Second World War. Thus, you go through it feeling almost like you're running in place, waiting for something to happen. I feel that I like this series a lot more than I should just because I like where the destination is. Unfortunately, the journey is kind of a long, dry one, almost an endurance test. Keep that in mind if you pick up this series.

The second part of Turtledove's yet unfinished American Empire trilogy is a distinct upturn from the last one, Blood and Iron. It continues the saga of begun in How Few Remain and continued in the Great War trilogy, and we continue to follow some of the characters into the 20's and 30's.

For new readers, this is an ongoing chronicle of an alternative world in which the Confederate States of America managed to gain independence from the US, later to join with Britain and France against Germany and the United States in World War I.

Blood and Iron, its predecessor, consentrated on too many characters over too long time and as a result became a bit too patchy at times. The Center Cannot Hold continues this trend in the first half, leading up to the Great Depression, from which the book changes greatly in style and quality. It focuses from there on the Freedom Party's quick rise to power in the CSA, closely following that of Hitler in our own world. We view this process both from the top, as seen through the eyes of chairman Jake Featherstone, and from the literally bottom, as experienced by Hippolyto Rodriguez, a poor peasant from the backward Confederate region of Sonora who gradually becomes enticed by the party's message of "getting even".

Unlike Blood and Iron, which left me rather disappointed, The Center Cannot Hold has left me truly looking forward to the next chapter of this saga.

Harry Turtledove's Great War-American Empire series is a masterwork of alternate history, and although I was only moderately impressed with Blood and Iron, I still rushed to buy The Center Cannot Hold. Although the timeline is fascinating, the novel itself is uneven. Certain sections are a great read, such as Jake Featherston's reemergence as a political force in Confederate politics, and Chester Martin's continuing portrayal of the Yankee proletarian. However, now that the war is over, most of the book's length is devoted to each character from the Great War going to work, getting married, having babies, or dropping dead. The way the books jump around from character to character, combined with this book's tendency to jump from year to year, makes each person's life a blur of non-importance that the reader cannot associate with. The reader's past involvement with these characters in life-and-death situations contributes further to the grinding mundanity of the characters' post-war lives.

Turtledove rushes through the politics of each election to the point where nothing at all surprises the reader. The U.S.-Japanese war comes across as a half-assed scheme to knock some Great War-style excitement into the book halfway through, but the chronological mandate of the story compels Turtledove to zip through any combat between the two powers in order to fit in more and more elections.

A few bright spots: Turtledove does go into further detail regarding the worldwide effect of the German-U.S. victory in Europe and Asia. The demise of one of my favorite Confederates at the hands of some Freedom Party yokels was really touching. Without giving too much away, let me just say it makes a powerful statement about life and death. I was very glad to see Hiplito Rodriguez return, this time as a full-fledged character and not a Latino stereotype. In the same vain, I was glad to learn more about the social and political situation in Sonora and Chihuahua. One more minor note: I was very impressed by Turtledove's ability to make a reference to one of his own previous books from an entirely different series. I will leave it to the hardcore Turtledove fans to discover, but let me hint by saying that Mutt Daniels from the Worldwar series and Irving Morrell in this book have the exact same reaction to hearing the same bad news about two different men with the same last name. Hopefully what I just said will make sense when you read the books.

In summation, this book is very disappointing for fans of the series and is worthwhile to read only if you have read all the previous books and are looking forward to the eventual re-match between the U.S.A. and the C.S.A. It definitely has its bright spots, but the nature of the interwar period makes telling its story pretty boring. I wish Turtledove would have followed in his own footsteps, jumping to the late 1930's just as the Worldwar-Colonization series jumped from the 1940's to the 1960's, and The Great War series picked up with the war itself, and back-filled the story between the Second Mexican War and the Great War. Hopefully Settling Accounts will have more meat to it. Despite the uneven performance of this book, I'm still looking forward to seeing what happens next.

As usual I couldn't wait to lay my hands on the newest by Harry Turtledove. In reviewing/rating this volume I have rather mixed feelings. I read the entire book at one sitting until 5:30 AM , so it must have been compelling enough...

For the time line of the story we pick up the characters in the early 1920's. Jake Featherston is in the throes of rebuilding the Freedom party after the Whig president is killed. Abner Dowling is transferred to Utah as General Pershing's assistant.Irving Morrell is sent into durance vile for having the temerity to criticise national policy , and Anne Colleton continues to seek power (difficult for a woman in those times) and complain about the Confederacy's lack of leadership.

Other characters grow up. Others reproduce. Some die. Basically the book is an overview of "the times" that Turtledove has created in an alternate universe.

The careful reader with some historical knowledge will find both Adolf Hitler and the Marx brothers hidden within the fabric of the story , which I found to be amusing. There are probably others that I missed on my first reading. I will, as usual , read it again.

My major complaint with this particular series is the dreadfully slow pace due to the microscopic focus on the mundane lives of some fairly inconsequencial individuals; perhaps Turtledove has bigger things planned for Scipio and Anne Colleton later on , but WHEN?

I intend to continue reading this series just to see how it turns out. Overall impression: good but not great ; needs to speed up the pace A LOT! Sadly only 3 stars when it could have been more if it covered more ground at a somewhat faster rate!

This series started with "How Few Remain", which had the South winning the Civil War, aligning with France and Britain to humiliate the North in a 2nd Civil War, similiar to the Franco-Prussian War.

This series is intelligently written. It's flaws have been Turtledove's meandering style of visiting a character for a couple of pages to see how the world has been impacting that character, and to reveal through that character what had been happening in the world; and the fact that Turtledove all too often has his characters and world perform unrealistic actions based upon the author's need to take his story in certain directions.

Both of these flaws are evident here, although one flaw is greater than the other. In this instance, the flaw is the unrelaistic actions which occur in this book.

A dwindling number of readers might remember Pearl Harbor. Most should remember the events of 9/11. In both instances, the USA united demanding vengence on the attacker. Therefore, if a foreign power attacks the USA, it is to be expected that the American reaction will be one of outrage and a quest for vengence.

Well, not in this book. Los Angels is bombed by the Japanese (for reasons which remain unkown) and the reaction of the USA seems to be pretty much of a yawn. This is just absurd.

As matters stand at the start of this book, the USA and it's ally, Germany, remain victorious in this world's equivalent of WWI, having defeated the CSA, Britain and France. Disgruntled Confederate soldier Jake Featherstone was well on his way to becoming the Adolf Hitler of the CSA, when his plans were derailed by an unauthorized assassin's killing of the president of the CSA. Covering a period of about 10 years, we witness the Great Depression of this world, which results in absurdities.

FDR managed to obtain public support and help to restore public morale by the socialist actions he took; however, this book has a socilaist as president whose actions are ineffective on every level.

Much of what is to come is predictable, such as the character who ends up running a prison camp during Mexico's civil war, and later works a jailer in Birmingham, Ala. I don't think you need worry what this person will do when concentration camps open in the CSA.

Still, what will be truly interesting is how this series depicts the eventual version of WWII between the USA and the CSA. If the author tries to compare post-WWI France with his version of the USA, a mistake will have been made. France had a large, well-equipped army, and actually had better tanks than the Germans of 1940.

But France had the Maginot line, and a large army, and importantly, not a very long frontier between the two nations. The USA and CSA share a border spanning thouands of miles. This means there would be vast changes between the French army of our world, and the USA army of Turtledove's story.

Newcomers should start earlier in this series. This is a well-written series, but be prepared to quibble.

The Center Cannot Hold continues American Empire series, and covers a roughly ten year period starting in the mid 1920's. It carries on the lives of those seen in "American Empire: Blood and Iron", most of whom were introduced in The Great War series.

I found the book to be interesting, and a necessary time link with the run-up to what promises to be some form of World War II. I say "some form" as Turtledove has introduced various elements that suggest the alliances that held in the Great War may not hold again. He has artfully taken actual historical conditions and wedded them to his alternative time line.

Nonetheless, overall I found the book curiously unfulfilling. The driving cultural events are all based in actual cultural and political currents of the 20th century (Economic boom and bust of the 20's and early 30's, Japanese imperialism and sneak attacks, growing desire of the losing nations in WWI to toss off restrictive and demeaning peace treaties and reassert themselves); there are no new original concepts beyond the idea that we are in an alternative time line.

Events in original portions/events of the American Empire world (Occupied Canada, Utah, and the Republic of Quebec) are either mundane or to be expected. Almost all the characters come across as more one dimensional than in previous books. The long time span of this book and his desire to get everyone in the book results in little time devoted to many of them (much like a Baseball All-Star game-you're on the roster, you get in the game!).

The depth of earlier book(s) in this and and earlier series is not evident, and he seems more willing to go in for drive-by drama. The best example of this is the death of a long-standing character. It was sudden, unexpected, and completely without impact on the story line. If you removed this death the story line would stay the same.

I understand that he is setting the stage for "The Great War: Round 2", but I wish Turtledove had chosen to give more depth to the characters and to certain events.

I look forward to the next entry in this series, and hope for more depth and even more originality in future American Empire books.

I've got to admit that I'm hooked on this series, even if I find myself reading these books without as much pleasure as I'd hoped to get. What Turtledove does well is illluminate our history by playing with the alternate timelines and getting the reader to want to stop and think and maybe go out and buy a few history books to see what was changed. While the multiple characters are enjoyable and the plots usually engrossing, this book covers so much time (nine years) that it's hard to really "know" them as we did in the previous books. For example Mary, daughter of a Canadian terrorist or freedom fighter (depending on your politics), checks in with us every few years, at 11, 15, 17, and 20. A typical person changes quite a bit through these ages but Mary keeps her rage toward the US and the need to avenge her father and brother as the major component of her sense of self. Many episodes seem to need more detail, but Turtledove chose to cover so much ground that they seem too removed. Cincinnatus Driver's illegal imprisonment by the Kentucky Secret Police was harrowing, but his eventual rescue is not just anti-climactic, it's almost lost. I wanted to know more; what alerted Clarence Darrow to this case and how did he succeed? Why does Darrow immediately leave and we never hear about him again?

Much of the book moves this way showing the birth and maturing of major character's children; in one scene a character's wife will be pregnant, in the next scene the child is five and a younger sibling has also arrived. This happens enough times to give the sense that Turtledove used the Hanna-Barbera method of backgrounds, namely a continuous loop instead of sketching the whole thing properly.

But that said, I still couldn't put the book down because I wanted to know what was going to happen, even though the major thrust of the story, Jake Featherstone's political rise, seemed preordained, being cast to parallel, in our timeline, the failure and later success of Hitler.

It's clear Turtledove has thought out the historical background carefully, and it's great fun to unearth some of the scaffolding. I know I'll be reading these as he continues to write them.

We return to Turtledove's alternate America. The
Confederacy won the Civil War, won the inevitable follow-up
war in 1870, but lost to the industrial North in World War I.
By the 1930's, a victorious Germany, once a Union ally, now
makes an uneasy competitor. A hot mini-war has broken out
with an undefeated Japan, which holds all of east Asia.
There is anti-German trouble brewing in defeated France.
On our continent, a bitter Confederacy has chosen to
follow a Hitler-clone, after the economies of both North and
South collapse into another Great Depression. The Canadians
still chafe under American occupation. President Hoover
still refuses any compromise with the rebellious Mormons in
Utah. The gutted American armed forces may not be able to
stand against aggressive Japanese, untrustworthy Germans, and
(secretly re-arming) resurgent Southerners.
So, what else is new?
The same plethora of characters who began "The Great
War" series are mostly still with us. Turtledove kills off
about one a book now. All the women seem to be experiencing
motherhood, from pregnancy through young adulthood. Compared
to earlier books, Turtledove seems to be racing through the
Roaring Twenties and the Depression, rearing a generation to
fight his alternate World War II. Other than that, it is
eerie to watch his characters hurrying toward their own Stock
Market crash. For their overconfident stock kiting "on
margin," read "Internet day-trading," and watch the 2002 Dow
on our own Wall Street slide lower and lower. The hair on
your neck will begin to creep on its own.
If you started this series, with _How Few Remain_, you
are (of course) hooked. You'll stick it out, review or no
review. Turtledove is such a consistently terrific writer
that you won't be disappointed. You knew that it would be
bad news ("To Be Continued") when you picked it up. This is
not the book, however, to launch a reader as a Turtledove
fan. Go back to _The Great War: American Front_ and catch
up. By the time the next installment is out, you'll be ready
to march into the darkness of the '30's with the rest of us.

Considering how much Turtledove publishes, the man must work without stop or sleep - and it shows in the writing. But, oh what great stories he has to tell!

This book is set in a universe were the South won the civil war (and the next one), but lost the Great War - a story told (sometimes ad nauseam) in 4 books so far. Ten years, 1924 till 1934, are covered: the recession and subsequent rise of a Nazi-style party in the South are the main topic.

In typical Turtledove-style a lot of characters tell their stories, add their perspective to a fascinating picture. Some of them are IMHO useless, some should be killed of (one is) ... and on top of it all, the book could do better with 100 pages less. But I repeat: the style of writing and the details of this book may be bad or tiresome - the overall result is not.

Turtledove manages to give a very good impression of what life was like in a defeated, impoverished country with discredited elites. Show the conditions that made possible the rise of authoritarian regimes all over Europe in the 20s and 30s - in this book it is the South.

Now I wonder if it is just a coincidence, that the Hitler-like Jake Featherstone begins his radio addresses with the statement "I am going to tell you the truth". Are the not some talk radio hosts who use similar phrases?

What makes this book more interesting than the last one from the series is that while it's alternate universe remains close to the real one, it gets more history of it's own: f.e. Japan and the USA already clash in 1932.

All things considered this is a great read for those already familiar with the series. For me a toss-up between three or four stars. And I'll give Turtledove the benefit of doubt and also look forward to the next installment. But shorter, please!

"Blood and Iron" is the first of the author's interwar trilogy. It's set between 1918 and 1923. The series is based on the idea that the Confederacy won at Antietam, won the Civil War, won what is called the "Second Mexicn War" 20 years later, and while allied with hardly mentioned France and Britain lost to a Teddy Roosevelt-led USA allied with the German Empire ("Kaiser Bill" is still in charge Over There as the trilogy commences).

This series is pure alt-hist. No invading space aliens, no magic; and it contains all the plusses (and alas the minuses) Mr. Turtledove's readers have come to expect. We have the usual vast array of characters, most of whom are carried over from the WWI trilogy, from different social classes and different parts of the alternate world (among my favorites are Lucien Galtier, a farmer in what is now the free repubic of Quebec and the delightfully revengeful South Carolinian Anne Colleton, who's lost her plantation to an uprising by black communists in the previous trilogy and now schemes with a crackpot facist, Jake Featherston, to gain power). Most of the characters are fictional, although Upton Sinclair appears here as a Socialist candidate for president of the USA and, in the most interesting flight of his imagination, the author imagines General Custer had never met up with disaster at Little Big Horn and has survived until the 1920s, where he is engaged in fighting terrorism in USA-occupied Anglophone Canada at the age of 80.

Those are the plusses. As for the minuses, well--Mr. Turtledove just can't do sex and he really shouldn't bother (just put in three dots when the hot stuff starts and move right along please) and while he tries to be helpful to the reader, reminding who this particular character is (and some of them reappear only 80 pages apart), we do not need to be told that Custer's adjutant is overweight every time he puts in an appearance, nor that Boston factory-worker Sylvia Enos paints red rings on yellow galoshes. Then, too, while the problems the author poses are often fascinating, his solutions are sometimes too simple (a criminal case is made to disappear with amazing ease).

Fans of alt. hist. in general, and fans of Mr. Turtledove are unlikely to be deterred by these minor annoyances, however.