The Gladiator (Crosstime Traffic) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Harry Turtledove (Author) "Annarita Crosetti didn't want to get up in the morning..." (more)
Key Phrases: home timeline, transposition chamber, curity police, Security Police, The Gladiator, San Marino (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Set in a future world where the Soviet Union won the Cold War, Turtledove's absorbing fourth Crosstime Traffic novel (after 2005's In High Places) is the best yet in this SF series with substantial YA crossover. The two main characters are particularly well drawn: 17-year-old Annarita Crosetti and 16-year-old Gianfranco Mazzilli, students at Enver Hoxha Polytechnic in a Milan that's part of the quasi-Stalinist Italian People's Republic. Gianfranco is a fairly hopeless student, until he discovers a new game shop called the Gladiator, where he's delighted to play a game, Rails Across Europe, that improves his algebra scores. When the security police close down the shop for teaching capitalism, the head clerk, who's a friend of Gianfranco's and a marooned outtimer, goes on the lam. Fans of Turtledove's unambiguously adult alternative history (Days of Infamy, etc.) will find this effort up to his usual high standard. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Booklist
Young Socialist Leaguer Annarita and apparatchik's son Gianfranco have grown up together in Milan after the Soviet Union won the cold war. Gianfranco discovers the Gladiator, a game shop whose fascinating wares teach him to think differently. Suddenly, the shop is closed. The regime realized that the games teach capitalism. The proprietors have vanished, and nowhere are their fingerprints registered. Annarita and Gianfranco run into former shop staffer Eduardo, who admits being an accidentally abandoned trader from another time line. The only way home for Eduardo involves getting to another crosstime transfer point--just ahead of the police. The fifth Crosstime Traffic yarn is a barn burner. Frieda Murray
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Tor Science Fiction; Reprint edition (September 30, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0765353792
• ISBN-13: 978-0765353795
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 3.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #336,650 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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• This is item 5 in The Crosstime Traffic Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars simple repetitive structure in the narrative, June 28, 2007

By	W Boudville (Terra, Sol 3) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Gladiator (Crosstime Traffic) (Hardcover)

Already the 5th book in this Crosstime series! Turtledove has impressive if not prodigious productivity. Commendable how this book continues the trend of describing a timeline quite different from those in the earlier books. Reading across the series, there is an unpredictability in settings that can be an attraction to some readers.

By the way, here there seems to be a slight reference to Turtledove's first big hit, The Guns of the South. The latter was also about alternate universes. In which the logo of Apple Computer was described. Also done in Gladiator. Turtledove probably put the remarks here, simply because a reader could recognise it, without him having to explicitly name the manufacturer. But maybe he's also reaching out to his earliest fans.

Another person who reviewed this book was spot on, hilariously but accurately, in labelling it "mission creep". An interesting development harking back at policy changes in the parent world.

Unfortunately, the narrative, in the combination of both the spoken dialog and the thoughts attributed to various characters, is often weak. There is a structure often present, usually involving a statement immediately followed by a counterpoint or negation of that statement. If you haven't noticed this, try rereading and parsing carefully. Once you see it, then you see it everywhere. Also true of the author's other works, like his 10 or 12 volume Civil War series. But in this book, the repetitive structure seems especially pronounced. As though he is dumbing down the narrative, for a young audience. Or that he is not putting enough effort into writing interesting prose. It can get stale to read, after you notice.

By contrast, look at Rowling's Harry Potter books. Also ostensibly for a similar audience. However the narrative flow is far more varied and interesting to read. You cannot easily deconstruct her works to detect a simple narrative pattern. Also reflected in the marketplace. Her books outsold any in the earlier Crosstime series books, probably by over an order of magnitude.

Granted, the typical reader of Gladiator probably will not consciously notice the repetitive structures. But unconsciously, this may be subsumed and expressed simply that the book is "ok but not great". And ultimately in sales. A pity, because Turtledove's series is a great idea, that deserves stronger expression. We need a successor to Piper's Paratime, and this series is the closest active approximation.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Getting Fun out of Communism, June 3, 2007

By	Edward E. Rom (Mankato, MN United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The Gladiator (Crosstime Traffic) (Hardcover)

I liked this book a lot! When I first started reading it, I for some reason thought that it might not be all that good, but that thought was short-lived.

The _Crosstime Traffic_ series is a juvenile (or "young adult," if you prefer)series involving a corporation of that name, which has a means of travelling between alternate timelines. They basically do clandestine import/export between their timeline ("home timeline") and the others ("alternates"). In this novel, you see mission creep setting in; Crosstime Traffic is engaged in subverting the political system in a timeline in which the communists won the Cold War. The story is set in a communist Italy of the late 21st century; I must say that it has a very realistic feel, in that it feels like it's been the 1940s for 150 years (I remember reading an editorial which stated that it was the 1940s in eastern Europe from the 40s until the fall of the Berlin Wall -- it makes sense to me). One of the Crosstime Traffic employees gets trapped there when the secret police close down their business (it sells subversive board games), and has to hide out with some acquaintances of his. The story is told from the point of view of the local characters, not the Crosstime Traffic point of view; it feels almost like Turtledove himself has spent time in a communist police state prior to 1990 or so.

In a previous review, I wondered what it is about Turtledove's writing that I like so much. I've thought about it, and a couple of things occurred to me. One is that his "local color" is always very good. His stories have little details in them that give them that sense of authenticity. Another is that his characters tend to be sympathetic, and seem real as well. His pacing is pretty good, too, so that it's easy to keep turning the pages in one of his stories.

I'd highly recommend this book (as well as the rest of the series) to anyone of any age, even though these books are written as juveniles.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Static society, February 1, 2008

By	topoman "topoman" (Newark, California USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Gladiator (Crosstime Traffic) (Hardcover)

Turtledove's juvenile alternate worlds series has had a pattern until now - teenagers from the "home timeline" of the late 21st century (whose past looks very much like our world) travel to an alternate world, have a romantic entanglement there and some difficulty in returning home. Their purpose in the alternate world is to obtain food for an overpopulated world through trade of items the home timeline can produce cheaply and which aren't too alien to the culture of the other timeline (no computers for medieval worlds), or to watch an advanced potential competitor.
The world in this story is one in which Soviet style communism has conquered the world and stayed in power for over a century. Given a huge number of parallel worlds, the author can certainly find one where this static state holds and where the Soviets revive from their 1950's decline and go on to conquer after a decline of the West in the 1960's and 1970's.
This world suffers from the constant problem of Soviet type society - people don't produce more than they have to, because the person who produces more benefits no more than a person who produced little. As a consequence, there is no surplus food or anything else to trade with the home timeline and the society is not a danger to other timelines. The mission to this timeline is, therefore, altruistic - inspire them to change their situation through computer games which teach capitalism. Such a mission is intrinsically dangerous, so the usual home timeline teenager is missing - the usual romance is between natives.
Of course, being a totalitarian society, the communists suppress the games and the home timeliner needs to find a way to return home. The hunt for a means of return is a good portion of the story.
One item that is bothersome - there is a "show how much I know about Russian" section. If such needs to be included, it would be nice to be accurate. E.g. Russian for "dog" should be spelled with the Russian equivalent of "b", not a "soft sign"; "chelovek" means "person", not "man" (which is "muzhchina") and Russians "matavat", not "mat" when they swear. After all, if Turtledove can do such a splendid job on The Chronicle of Theophanes: An English Translation of Anni Mundi 6095-6305 (A.D. 602-813) (Middle Ages), he ought to be able to handle Russian.