Customer Reviews

Settling Accounts Return Engagement: Book One of the Settling Accounts Trilogy

5 star:		(20)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Because I love Turtledove's idea of a divided nation existing into the 20th century, I devoured this book. I just wish I didn't have to grimace as much as I did. I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed how Turtledove repeats the same facts over and over again, leaves out crucial or interesting details (like troop counts and world events), gives weird names to common technologies (what's he going to call the jet engine? the air exploder?) and continues developing (or failing to develop) weak characters, like Chester Martin and Scipio. Yeah, he needs these fictional characters to capture the true struggle of the common man, but I think most of us want to see how the big dogs would react to this world. We had so many great leaders come from this era, like Eisenhower, Marshall, Nimitz, King, Halsey, Bradley, and Hap Arnold. If he cut out most of the repetitive facts, he'd have plenty of room for these men.

I don't mind him paralleling his alternate history to real history, though. Yeah, it seems kind of lazy, but as a critique of ourselves 60 years ago, it strikes home the point that as far as our social sensibilities went, not a whole lot kept us from falling over the edge and allowing extremism to flourish on our own soil. A scary thought. It's just that if he really wanted to parallel history, you'd think he'd start the war in 1939 or 40 so the "warmongers" could vote the appeasing Al Smith out of office a la Prime Minister Chamberlain and allow a real leader like FDR to take over.

All in all, it's obvious that this is the final chapter in an American civil war allowed to last over 80 years, and I look forward to see how it resolves itself and if a battered, morally drained Confederacy finally rejoins the USA just as Germany and Japan joined the free world in our history.

My final pet peeve: Why would Churchhill, whose mother was an American from NY, be anti-USA?

Harry Turtledove returns to two of his favorite alternate history topics: the American Civil War and World War Two, is "Settling Accounts: Return Engagement."

Under command of Gen. George Patton, the Confederates have swarmed into the United States, storming across the Ohio River, into Ohio, effectively cutting the United States in half. Gen. Abner Dowling is unable to stem the Confederate tide, and is recalled to Washington in disgrace to face hearings. Meanwhile, the Mormons once again revolt in Utah, and terrorism looms in Canada.

By now, we know most of the faces in this drama, though a few drop out, including the surprising choice to kill off Anne Colleton, one of the more interesting characters in the story.

The action is good, there's sufficient human elements to the story, and the overall stragety is thought out well enough. The biggest downer though is that it's too much of a recast of World War Two, with a Hitler-analogy and all that came with it.

Still, it's worth the read, and I just got my copy of Drive to the East today.

I'm glad I got that off my chest. I have been anxiously awaiting the continuation of Harry Turtledove's alternate history series between the USA and the Confederacy since I finished The Victorious Opposition, mainly because that book was so bad and because I wanted to see how Turtledove did once he got back on a war footing. I'm very happy to say that the improvement is so noticeable that it shines. Yes, there are problems and annoyances, but for once they do not overshadow everything else. This is the best book in the series since World War I ended.

I'll get the main gripes out of the way first, because for the first time in this series, and for the second book in a row, I am going to praise Turtledove. As with all the rest of the books in this series, the main criticism is the prose and dialogue. Turtledove has an annoying habit of not only repeating character traits (more about that below), but also words and phrases used in narration. Three times in the first 150 pages, there is a variation of somebody telling a dark joke or comment and everybody laughing because "laughing is better than screaming," or something to that effect. All three of them are in the same context too. The city the character inhabits is being bombed and they are down in the shelter. It's an understandable reaction, but it brings the narrative to a screeching halt every time he uses it. It occurs a few more times later in the book, though it's not as obvious. Also, the style of the writing is very plain and almost "down-home" simplistic most of the time. There are a lot of "I'd love to tell you you're wrong, but you're right" type comments made from one character to another. The dialogue is stilted and so is the narrative voice. It does make the book a quick read, however.

The second obvious problem is, as is always the case with Turtledove, character repetition. I think every scene that contains Sam Carsten, a sailor for the United States, mentions how susceptible he is to sunburn. That's the most blatant thing, but each character has a trait or two that keeps coming up every time the narrative comes back to that person. We hear in quite a few Jefferson Pinkard (the camp commander mentioned above) scenes that every time the phone rings, it brings trouble from Richmond. Some have claimed that the constant introduction of characters is to help keep them straight, but that is even less of a problem in Return Engagement than it is in Turtledove's other books, as the character count is quite low in this one.

Thankfully, there are many pluses that outweigh these faults. He has cleared away most of the dead character weight. The annoying Nellie Jacobs is long gone, and her grandson isn't anywhere near as dull as she was. He doesn't even introduce that many new characters to take their places, resulting in a much tighter story with a few different viewpoints. Each character is there to give us a facet of the ongoing conflict.

Having jettisoned the boring people, we have a nice mix of older and newer characters. The most interesting has to be Sam Carsten (which makes it all the more annoying that he has the most repetition), who we have followed since the first book of the Great War, six books ago. He has come a long way, working his way up from an enlisted soldier to the position he earns here. He's straightforward, always intelligent and willing to speak his mind, and he's quite humble as well. He's just a joy to read about (skin conditions not withstanding).

There is another reason why this book is so much better than the last three. It's extremely tight and focused. All of the action regards the war in one way or another. The characters' motivations are not scattered all over the map, allowing their boring sides to come out. Also, the entire book takes just over 6 months, unlike the long years that each of the last three books encompassed. Thus, events in one character' story can actually affect some of the other characters. There isn't the isolation or the sense of events being glossed over that really turned me off before. Also, the atmosphere that Turtledove presents is almost palpable. He captures the horrors of living under a constant bombing very well (though, again, he does kill the mood a little bit by repeating it much too often).

One other thing can either be a plus or a minus. At the beginning of the book, Turtledove kills off one of his longstanding characters in a rather perfunctory fashion. Personally, I loved it, for a couple of reasons. First, it shows that he's not afraid to kill somebody off, even somebody who many people might have loved. Who is safe when the author is willing to do that? It adds to the sense of danger. Secondly, I didn't really care for the character, and I wasn't looking forward to three more books with the character doing the same thing that has been done for six books now.

Settling Accounts: Return Engagement shows that Turtledove is a much better writer when he involves military matters. While the prose is still annoying, he more than makes up for it with this outing. If you gave up on the series because of the lackluster American Empire segment, come back. While all is not forgiven, you can stop holding your nose for a while.

David Roy

I've read some of the other reviews of this book, and have to say that the same complaints seem to apply to a great deal of Harry Turtledove's work. My own observation is that the Turtledove's performance is very workmanlike: the prose is clunky, the characters seem banal, the situations in the alternate universes often are thinly disguised paraphrases of real history -- I could probably think of other less-than-complimentary features of his work, but that will suffice for now. The question I will attempt to answer is, if all this is true, why do I keep buying Turtledove's books new, in hardcover? Does he somehow implant subliminal suggestions in his text in order to brainwash the customers into buying more and more of his books, akin to Chinese restaurant owners who slip opium into their food?

I think the reason is less exotic than that -- Turtledove has the knack for making the reader want to find out what's going to happen next, and keeps him turning the pages. This review doesn't have to be about any Turtledove book in particular (though I did like this one) -- it's really about them all. When I pick up a Turtledove book, I know what I am getting, and, best of all, I haven't been disappointed yet.

I'm getting sort of antsy -- I think it's a Turtledove jones coming on....

Okay a lot was already stated by the previous reviewers. I'm just going to voice my main points about this book.

1) Maybe it's because I read the previous books in the story. Maybe it's because my expectations changed. But what annoyed me to no end throughout this book was:

HORRIBLE WRITING!! It's outrageously bad. Each and every character talks in the same way, they use the same phrases. Is there no editor for Mr. Turtledove?? The book could be made half as long, and much more enjoyable to read, if only the endless references and the in-between-the-lines stuff in the dialogues was left out. Come one, no one needs the references, it's not as if anyone who wasn't hooked on the prequels would bother reading this kind of book.

2) The battle scenes are soooooo bland and boring! Some people say Turtledove gets better when he writes about war. No, he doesn't! He doesn't know jack about it, and the absolute unbelievability makes it only harder to read. For example, Morell is said to be the commander of the armored US troops in Ohio. How comes he never actually does any commanding - he doesn't even have a staff, he just drives an ordinary tank, shoots up Confederate tanks and every now and then says something over the radio. (Which Turtledove insists on calling "wireless". Argh.) What could have made for a wonderful Stalingrad-esque action - the Confederate push into that industrial Ohio town, where one of the characteres observed US troops rushing from their train cars right into battle - is left unused. There is one scene on it, and that's it. And the US fighter pilot (Moss) sure does a lot of fighting, but it's all the same and no different from the stuff he did in the Great War books. He hops into a plane, takes off, shoots down a few confeds, and lands. Repeat until book it over. You'd expect that there would be more briefings, that he would communicate with the radar ("Y-Range"... aaargh) installations, and that someone would tell this officer what's actually going on. Oh and the only general among the characters also never does much real commanding. He sits in an office, like some clerk, answers the telephone by himself and asks his lieutenants idiotic stuff that no general would ever, ever say to a subordinate, like "Damnation. I was counting on those troops to go into the counterattack against the eastern prong. If I hold it up till they do come in... well, what the devil will the enemy to do me in the meantime?" Aaaaaargh.

Did I also mention that troops are mever mentioned by unit name, only by "the reinforcements you asked for", "our armor", "these troops on the other side of town"? This all makes for absolutely unbelievable war scenes. Turtledove (or his editors) should find someone who knows how to write this stuff for the next book.

3) The US and CS are at war, but nothing goes on. Huh? Well, okay, Philadelphia is bombed, and there is news about the war on the newsreels, and everyone says "oh things are so hard now that the US are cut in two and we need to ration gas" but there is zero noticable effect on the civilians. No war bond rallies (that might have gone some way to give an impression of war mentality, and there could have been cameo appearances), no kind of "tightening the belt" that you'd expect when total war breaks out, and none of the spy hysteria that happened in our history in both Britain and America. Especially in the Confederate States there is none of this, althougn you'd expect political life to become much more hysterical.

4) It's all so predictable. In the beginning of the book, a prison camp administrator complains that marching the the prisoners into a swamp and shooting them is so tedious. He then hears that one of the wardens committed suicide through the exhaust gases of his car. And still it takes him all throughout the book to come up with the idea of mobile gas chambers... This way of writing is so incredible tedious, you wonder if Turtledove thinks his audience is a pack of idiots, to quote from Jake Featherston.

Overall, the book fell miles short of what even someone experiennced in Turtledove's books would have expected. There are a few okay scenes... but the general impression was that this book showed all too clearly that Turtledove doesn't know jack about WW2. Well, he has three kids to bring through college, so it's no wonder he writes anything that his publishers pay for.

Up until five years ago Harry Turtledove was my favorite writer. Here was a fellow historian and teacher, who could put poetry in his work. I love alternate history, used it over 40 years ago in the classroom, and have even written it. It can teach the real story in history. Harry Turtledove has forgotten that. With this series, which began with the South winning the Civil War (never fully explained), he has gone down hill. It is time to let this series go. Other writers like Eric Flint are leaving him in their dust. Why am I so hard on him. Because Turtledove has let his political opinions and regional prejudices destroy his objectivity.

Nevermind the obvious that others have pointed out. The obvious being that had the Civil War been won by the South, not a single person alive today would be in that world. Just one little change, "the butterfly effect", can determine when one may marry, who they may merry, and when they even conceive. In this alternate world there would be no Winston Churchill, no Franklin D. Roosevelt, no Ernest Hemingway, no Louie Armstrong, and none of the others named. I say nevermind, as it is fun and other writers have fallen in the same trap. Some like Keith Laumer knew better and just had fun doing it. Turtledove is perfectly serious, or at least he appears to be.

It is the prejudices that concern me. First, against the South. I am originally from Ohio, but have lived in the South for 58 of my 68 years. I find it hard to believe that Turtledove can only find two decent people in the South to write about, two African Americans. The Hispanic character may be sympathetic, but still very racist. I was born in the North, however the last 58 of my 68 years have been spent in the South and I think I know the region far better than Turtledove. Before the Civil War the Underground Railroad would have failed were there not some White Southerners helping. When Virginia, as an example, voted to leave the Union it was a close vote. After the Civil War there were White Southerners who opposed the Jim Crow laws. As a young man I was in the Civil Rights Movement and I worked with many born Southern white men and women who supported that movement. Mr. Turtledove is obviously trying to relate the killing of Black Americans in camps with what happened to the Jews in Nazi Germany. However, there are stories of German citizens who resisted this and who helped the Jews. In other words, Turtledove paints a South that is not just as bad, but worse than Nazi Germany.

The second prejudice he reveals is against religion. It is strange that with all the facets of society covered that he leaves out religion. The only two people he writes about with a religious connection is a Socialist congresswoman in the North and an advisor to Jake Featherstone, both Jewish, but obviously not believers. Where are the Christian leaders? You cannot write about history without covering that too, something Eric Flint does a beautiful job of. Maybe Turtledove is afraid that if he covered Southern Christians he might find some willing to help Black Americans. In the North, tradition alone requires that this area be covered. I am sure Turtledove would be negative in dealing with religious leaders, but if honest he would have to show the positive ones too. The role of religion and faith in God cannot be ignored in writing history whether in alternate or real time

I suspect Harry Turtledove is tired of this series himself. This latest entry in the series is repetitive. His switching from character to character causes him to repeat, even in the same book, information he has given about the same chracter earlier. Readers are treated as though they are too stupid to remember what they have just read. If he is so concerned then maybe there should be a section in the front of each book that lists and describes his characters. He did that in an earlier and much better written series.

Harry Turtledove is very talented and even while on this series has been writing other books. I will continue reading his work, even this series. I just pray that Harry doesn't figure that he can take me for granted and do whatever he pleases when it comes to plotting. A point may come when readers will also grow tired and will quit buying his books.

I've had problems with this series from the first book (How Few Remain) and now having read all eight of them back to back since Christmas, I just can't take it any more.

From the monotonous repetition of character traits to unlikely historical parallels,(CSA Stukas?) I don't think I can take the last (next) 2 books. Why bother? Anyone who has a rudimentary knowledge of WWII knows whats coming. Without reading ANYTHING regarding the next book, Drive to the East, I can tell you whats going to happen. The CSA (read the Nazis) will break out east, forcing the US (read the USSR) to pull out of its bogged down southern thrust and consolidate. The CSA will be stopped short of Philadelphia (read Moscow) after a long blody advance. That will set up the last book in the east for General Morrel to "save the day".

In the Pacific besides Sam Carsten being sunburned (shouldn't he have skin cancer by now?) It'll be a simillar outcome to the original war out there. Especially since the US will have a functioning A-bomb by the end of the 9th beginning of the 10th book. THAT bomb will be dropped on the Japanese just as it was in real life. Where the story will part company with actual WWII history is that the Japanese will surrender before the CSA does and it will be because of the bomb, and an advancing US army.

I've enjoyed some of Turtledoves work in the past which is why I added the series to my Christmas list, I just feel in this series he's lost a sense of reality or realism. The books do have their moments but they are few and far between.

The whole rise to power of the Freedom Party and the way the war is going just smacks of taking a condensed history of WWII, changing dates and pertinent character names, flip flopping things around a bit, throw in some fictional conversation and blammo! Here's a new series.

The Drive to the East had better be SOMETHING other than what I described above, or thats it. I'm done with this and the author. Oh more depth and character development would go a long way too.