To recap very, very briefly: A failed physics project in the year 2021 catapulted a handful of naval vessels and their crews back to the year 1942, where they became immersed in the ongoing battles, politics and culture of World War II.

As the current volume opens, the endgame of the war is on, and we observe from three fronts and from one of the Allied homelands—the United States, where in California a high-tech realm called the Zone is giving premature birth to a new century.

In Europe, D-Day has been launched, but with several twists from our historical expectations, dictated by the invaders from the future and their superior technology. In Germany, Hitler and his cronies strive to adapt to the new forces—and make ready some hideous bioweapons.

In the Pacific, the Japanese lose their own bit of captured 21st-century technology, a ship named the Dessaix, and begin to retreat. But not before assembling thousands of kamikaze rocket bombs.

In the Soviet Union, Stalin and his henchmen finally betray their non-belligerence pact with the Axis and attack both Germany and Japan. Ostensibly on the side of the Allies, Stalin is really out to dominate the globe, based on foreknowledge of the Soviet Union's 1989 demise. And he has a good ace up his sleeve: The Soviets are the first faction to recreate an atomic bomb, which they will have no hesitancy about deploying.

As before, Birmingham splits his panoramic tale among a number of familiar characters: embedded reporter Julia Duffy; Adm. Kolhammer and Gen. Lonesome Jones; Harry Windsor, soldier and heir to the British throne; two female ship captains, Karen Halabi and Jane Willet; and dozens of others.

Is Paris radioactive?

John Birmingham very efficiently and satisfyingly brings to a climax all the threads he launched in the first two books, but at the partial expense of some of the more interestingly SF and cultural angles he had been exploring. There's just not enough page space for him to elaborate deeply on non-war-related matters, as he did in the earlier novels, nor to enhance any of his characterizations. We get a few flashforwards as to how the world will develop sociopolitically and culturally—and how the main characters will fare, post-war—and some flashbacks of personal significance, but the emphasis in this concluding volume is on the big picture of global combat. To be sure, Birmingham does not suddenly forget all his writerly virtues and reduce his characters to ciphers: In every scene they are vibrant and alive and consistent with previous portraiture. But there's just no time to indulge their idiosyncracies, or to speculate about what the future might bring.

In other words, this is how it is in wartime. Certain aspects of life are shelved.

On the level he does inhabit in this particular installment, though, Birmingham is exemplary. The many contending factions are all given their insightful due, with the psychological and realpolitik constraints on the various leaders and fighting men and women limned well. The descriptions of combat—both from an executive remove and up close—are terrifyingly gruesome and detailed. The strategy and tactics of all players are believable, both logical and impulsive by turns. There are plenty of intimate set pieces, such as the escape of Nazi "traitor" Paul Brasch from Paris. In short, Birmingham succeeds in restaging World War II in a manner as gripping as, say, Herman Wouk's The Winds of War (1971) and War and Rembrance (1978).

But the "final impact" of this series might actually lie in its depiction of the eternal spirit of America and its like-minded allies. In Chapter 31, Admiral Yamamoto ponders on the Allied spirit of adaptability and optimism and can-do toughness. Considering the "long jihad" future the time travelers emerge from, it's a not-so-subtle pep-up message to the readers of 2007, as we sit mired in our own global struggles.