Drive to the East (Settling Accounts Trilogy, Book 2) (Hardcover)

by Harry Turtledove (Author)
Key Phrases: barrel commander, auto bombs, ranging gear, Jake Featherston, United States, Great War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
In Turtledove's engrossing second book in the alternate history master's Settling Accounts trilogy (after 2004's Return Engagement), Confederate forces, in an undeclared war of revenge that coincides with WWII, have split the United States from the Ohio River to Lake Erie, but this only stiffens Yankee resolve. Insurrection breaks out in occupied Canada and in Mormon Utah, resulting in harsh reprisals by U.S. troops against civilians, while Confederate President Jake Featherstone pushes for more "population reductions" of freed slaves. As in the previous volume, Turtledove comes up with convincing analogues to events during WWII, such as the Confederate army's Stalingrad-like defeat around Pittsburgh. On the other hand, his portrait of the führer-like Featherstone is less persuasive. The Southern leader shows more courage and flexibility than his model, making intimations of future behavior a procrustean attempt to force him back into a Hitlerian mold. There's enough back story for the benefit of new readers, while established fans, despite the repetition, will find this latest installment thoroughly satisfying.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* The second volume of Turtledove's third alternate World War II trilogy, Settling Accounts, is in many ways the strongest one in any of them. The Confederacy has given its best shot at cutting the U.S. in two between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes, but U.S. production and tenacity are beginning not only to hold the line but also to regain lost ground. Meanwhile, at sea the primary opponents are the U.S and Britain, and "deep in the heart of Texas," nobody is singing as Jake Featherston's final solution to the Negro problem picks up speed. There is plenty of action, and, of course, characterization remains one of Turtledove's long suits. But the real strength of the book, and of the whole alternate-history saga of which it is neither least nor last, lies in the juxtaposition of events not usually associated with people who could be readers' parents or grandparents. Firing squad executions in Canada? Suicide bombers in Utah and the Deep South? A U.S. destroyer escort sinking a British Q-ship? The pacing practically compels one to keep reading, but after a certain point, Turtledove's not-just-refutation but massacre of "American exceptionalism" may bring some readers to the point of putting the book away and seeking a soothing, cozy novel by Stephen King. Roland Green
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Del Rey (August 9, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345457242
• ISBN-13: 978-0345457240
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #558,878 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

• This is item 2 in The Settling Accounts Series.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Drive to the East? More like a crawl..., October 17, 2005

By	David Roy (Vancouver, BC) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Harry Turtledove just drives me crazy sometimes. He can come up with some really interesting plots and characters, but his writing just makes me climb the walls sometimes. The plot itself has to be very interesting in order to grab me (which is why I only read one of his series). Settling Accounts: Drive to the East is just like Return Engagement with one exception: my annoyance meter shot through the roof. Turtledove is known for his excessive repetition, but this book just took that repetition to a new level. Add to that the clunky prose and bad dialogue, and you get a book where you really want to know what happens but really have to struggle to get there.

As I have said before about this series, the plotting is wonderful. There are a few too many obvious choices, like having another "Stalingrad" and having Featherston act too much like Hitler in all respects. Overall, though, I like what Turtledove has done with it. There are some little things that bothered me, such as why the there doesn't appear to be any US troops west of Ohio other than in the extreme southwest and fighting in Utah. The Confederates split the country in two, but in reading about what happens, they don't seem concerned at all about anything west of Ohio. The "drive to the east" from the title of the book takes up everything. The US is attacking in Virginia, but that's stalled. What about Illinois and Iowa? Overall, though, Turtledove gives us enough viewpoint characters that we get to see most of what's going on in North America, and that's a good thing. There is one area that we don't get to see, however, and I think that's a shame. I won't reveal it, because it will reveal a character death, but I will say that this character's death happens at just the perfect time to rob us of getting a viewpoint of what's happening in a certain segment of the war. I'm sure Turtledove had his reasons, but it disappointed me.

Especially chilling is that we see the "Final Solution" from the point of view of two characters that we have grown to know over a period of 8 books, characters that we may not love, but we do know. We've seen their prejudices, but having become familiar with them, it's hard to swallow them buying into all of this (not to mention that one of them actually is the idea-man behind it!). It's easier to look at monsters like that when we don't know anything about them, and I found those scenes uncomfortable, but in a good way. I like it when an author can do that to me.

Everything above was great, and it made me really want to read the next book. He left a couple of characters on cliffhangers, killed off a couple of other characters, and gave us a new viewpoint character. I liked how we got the black experience with two men who are in the thick of all the fear that this atmosphere brings.

Yet this book was a struggle to get through. First, Turtledove's style, at least in this series, is a "down home country bumpkin" kind of style, even in the narration. The dialogue is the same way, and it was extremely irritating. Too many "I'd like to say you are wrong, but I can't, because you're right" type of statements. Most of the prose just grated on me. But this is par for the course with Turtledove, at least for me.

Also par for the course is the amount of repetition, both in dialogue and narration. However, Turtledove must have hit the "overdrive" button on this one, as it is almost everywhere in this book. I can't count the number of times he mentions men looking around for a ditch to hide in when airplanes are above. I wish I could tell you how many times, when we're either looking at Featherston or Potter (the spymaster), that we hear the wrestling metaphor for the current situation. Ideally, the Confederate surprise attack would have knocked the US out of the war immediately, but since the US has refused to give in despite being divided, the Confederacy is now wrestling the US in a match it can't win without a knockout blow. Turtledove teases us by mentioning, yet again, Sam Carstens' need for zinc oxide to avoid sunburn, but then he only mentions it one more time in the book. I thought we were saved, but instead, he decides to repeat everything else in the book. At almost 600 pages now, this book could have been a bit shorter and less padded without all of this.

It's a really good thing I care about most of the characters (now that Turtledove has killed off most of the annoying ones), or I wouldn't have been able to finish the book. As it was, Drive to the East was a slog, like walking through the mud of No-Man's Land in the Great War (which he also continually references). I'm in this story to the end, as I really want to see how it turns out (and whether Atlanta or Charleston is going to get nuked). But my head may be horribly bruised by the time I'm done with it, from banging my head against the wall too much.

David Roy

24 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Present in Turtledove's alternative past, August 10, 2005

By	Mark Klobas (Tempe, AZ, USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

There is a good deal to like in Turtledove's latest installment of his ongoing alternative history saga of a divided America. The second volume of the "Settling Accounts" series picks up right where the last one left off, with the United States and the Confederate States at war once again. The American president is dead and the Confederate drive through Ohio has split the U.S. in two. Yet with a new president the war continues, and Turtledove entertains with his own version of the Second World War, following a number of characters from the previous volumes as they fight and live through the conflict.

There is an interesting new note to this volume. The Mormon revolt in Utah - an ongoing subplot that dates back to the initial volume in the series - produces a new weapon that is more familiar to readers from today's headlines than from histories of World War II. It seems that Turtledove has decided to introduce an element of 21st century warfare to his 1940s battlefield as a way of commenting on current events, suggesting his own attitudes to today's violence. It will be interesting as well to see if he develops this idea further in the next volume.

Yet as enjoyable as the novel is, it suffers from a degree of sloppiness. Some of the sloppiness is error borne of too little research - I doubt that his alternate U.S. would name a destroyer escort after a Southerner, for example - while some seems to be of exhaustion. Compared to the initial volumes of the series there seems to be a growing degree of repetitiveness in this book, not just of the last installment (a little understandable due to the need to refresh readers from what happened previously) but within the book itself. Observations and even plot developments are recycled and rehashed almost as if Turtledove is simply trying to fill space. While I'm as eager for the next volume as any other fan of the series, I would be willing to wait a little longer if it led to a novel of the caliber of "How Few Remain." Though this book may develop the tale he started with that work, it seems to be a little hollow by comparison.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Pretty good, but not as good as it could have been, December 25, 2005

By	Peter Hobson (Groton, CT USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I've been reading this entire series with pleasure. Unfortunately, there are a few things in this particular book that jar me.

I'm a retired U.S. Navy Chief so I know how warships operate. Turtledove emphasizes that the mustang Lieutenant, Sam Carsten, doesn't know shiphandling. Apparently, Turtledove thinks that shiphandling means standing at the wheel and steering the ship. Officers don't do that. In the U.S. Navy, helmsmen are junior seamen. The Officer of the Deck (OOD) directs them. That's because shiphandling involves a whole lot more than just steering. Navigation, ship's speed, and general shipboard routine are controlled by the OOD. He (nowadays, or she) cannot get distracted by the full-time job of keeping the bow pointed in the right direction.

Turtledove seems to think that his readers can't remember details. Believe me, Harry, we don't have to be told every 20 pages that Northern tobacco tastes like horse droppings and Southern tobacco is ambrosial. We don't have to told time after time that Yossel Reissen's aunt is Congresswoman Blackford but he doesn't use that connection because it wouldn't be right. We only have to be told once that Sam Carsten sunburns easily. We can actually recall that stuff all on our own.

I'd love to know what is happening in the rest of the world. There's a war going on in Europe that's barely mentioned. For that matter, we don't really know what's happening in Canada.

Now that I've got my whines done, I must say that I enjoyed "Drive to the East" and I'm looking forward to the next book in the series.