Most Helpful Customer Reviews
38 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
My love/hate relationship with this series, September 28, 2004
First of all, I really like the plot of this series of books by Harry Turtledove. He is very imaginative in fashioning the alternative history following a Confederate victory in the Civil War. I also like his plot device of showing all events through the eyes of a large and diverse cast of characters.
But... BUT... the author continues to annoy the heck out of me with his tendency to repeat, repeat, and repeat again the characteristics and motivations of each of the characters. Ditto factual elements, such as the streets and sidewalks in black neighborhoods being in bad shape. It's as if he thinks we have forgotten what we read 50 pages previously. His editor should have clued him in a long time ago that this was not only unnecessary, but also a turn-off for readers. I would guess that over 95% of the people reading this book have read at least some of the previous books as well. We already know (to pick one of the most obvious examples) that Sam Carsten gets sunburned easily. It's probably been mentioned 60 times since Carsten's character arrived in the series. Mention these things ONCE per book, please!
Another annoyance: a character will make a rather mundane and obvious observation about the war -- such as a comment about the enemy's strategy -- and other characters will act like he's a military genius for thinking of something so profound. I don't know why that bothers me, but it does.
I notice I'm not the only one bothered by Mr. Turtledove's stylistic quirts. I hope he will read the reviews here on Amazon and give them serious consideration as he writes the next two books (which I'll certainly devour in any case). He did, indeed, seem to respond to criticism that the sex scenes in an earlier book were an embarrassingly bad idea, since he hasn't repeated the mistake in recent books of the series.
A few requests for the author:
- I really am interested in learning what's happening in the rest of the world. Please provide more than just the smallest of crumbs.
- How about a Mormon character that we can follow?
- How about a Confederate enlisted man?
Despite the annoyances, I love the books. And this one was among the best of the series so far.
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33 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I'm an addict and I need help!, January 9, 2005
Ok, I've read much of Harry Turtledove's books and short stories and he shows he's got talent. But this is ... well, let's try boring. Why?
1. Characters. He seems to want to say the same things about the same characters each time. Ok, Mary Pomeroy is an angry terrorist bomber. Chester Martin's wife doesn't think the war matters to her or her husband. Sam Carsten is always focused on his sunburn. The Mexican gentleman always thinks whatever the leaders say makes sense to him. At least he isn't going on and on anymore (like in the other series) that General Dowling is really fat! Do we need a rehashed and flat description of the cahacter each time we read of them? Are they all so one-dimensional? This isn't a movie, it's the 7th book of the series, there's time to flesh these people out.
2. Can we at least have ONE good argument? There are so many times in this book where Character A says one thing, Character B makes a contrary point and we read something like this, "Character A couldn't say that he liked what he was hearing from Character B but couldn't say he was wrong either." C'mon, someone please tell the other character they were wrong, just once, no one is this agreeable!
3. I get the feeling he picked up a WW2 history book, kept the basic events and changed out some names and locations. We have Stukas, we have war breaking out June 22, 1941, we have a CSA preesident modeled on Hitler whose long on fight and short on imagination, we have the US fooling around with hush-hush radioactive stuff in Eastern Washington, we have death camps for blacks and a final solution, it goes on and on. I can accept that there would be a war between these two fictional powers but let's extrapolate, let's create something new and novel here.
I've seen Harry Turtledove do better, much better. I've seen it in many books but it isn't in this one. Perhaps that's inevitable. A series is not a good forum to showcase talent as things generally get stale over time and I wonder if it's gets boring to write after awhile.
So why am I buying these books? I think I'm addicted, I have after all read all the others of the series and it's hard not to break away now. I am starting to get better though, I got this from a Christmas gift and if I do read the others it'll probably be from the library.
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9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Rooting for Rommel, April 25, 2005
If you never thought you'd admire a Nazi war hero, this series gives you the chance to do so without betraying your Yankee sensibilities. The leading US commander, Irving Morrell, is a thinly disguised Erwin Rommel, the Desert Fox who famously frustrated the British in North Africa from 1941 to 1943. Ever since American Front, he's been one of the most vibrant and interesting characters, though he faded in importance in the Depression era depicted in the last three novels. Finally, in Return Engagement, he receives the accolades and rank that are his due, as well as earning the grudging and potentially lethal admiration of his enemies.
Though a welcome up-pacing from the American Empire novels, this book still stalls the inevitable sacrifices and clashes that made the real WW II such a hellish nightmare. Turtledove increasingly impels action with the sweep of history rather than with the actions of the characters, making some of the civilians - Scipio, Chester Martin, Hipolito Rodriguez - more like peripherals than players. The author just isn't getting much mileage out of these characters at this point; he's keeping them along with the hint that possibly they will become central later. Add to this his habit of repeating trivial details using the exact words in every book, and sometimes more than once in each book, and sections of this multi-thousand page series work better than prescription drugs for putting the reader to sleep.
Ultimately, you don't read this series for the brilliant writing, depth of character, vivid descriptions, or even the originality of the plot. None of those things are here any longer, at least not as brightly as they were promised in How Few Remain. This series continues to offer an imaginative view of an alternate universe, and the author's exploration of how the people in that unreal place answer questions much akin to those that faced us or our ancestors is what keeps us reading this series.
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