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his book is the first in a new set presumably intended to complete the massive series known overall as The Great War, which has been fleshed out so far in the form of two previous trilogies.
This seventh book in the series charts the events of roughly six months, from June of 1941 through the New Year, in an alternate timeline where the Confederate States never fell. North America is divided into the USA and the CSA, with the former polity ruling Canada as well as various states, while the latter government holds sway over its own states and part of Mexico. Having fought their last war some 20 years ago, the USA and the CSA have endured a testy peace. But when the megalomaniacal leader of the CSA, Jake Featherston, decides the time is ripe, he launches a sneak attack against Philadelphia, the capital of the USA, and the latest round of bloodshed is underway.
Turtledove splits his perspective among 20 major characters and scores of lesser ones, making it somewhat hard to render a capsule account of all the multifarious events in the book. On a grand scale, the action is easy to summarize: After the initial shock, the Confederates focus their campaign in Ohio. They eventually succeed in reaching north all the way to the Great Lakes, effectively dividing the USA in two. The British come in on the side of the Confederacy, engaging mainly in some naval battles with the USA, which also finds itself beleaguered in the Sandwich Islands by the Japanese. Nonetheless, the USA manages to bring the war down into Virginia, aiming for the CSA capital, Richmond. Air raids batter both sides, one such bombardment closing out the book by scoring a major victory against the USA.
But all these macrocosmic military doings are inseparably embodied and embedded in the microcosmic lives of the fully rounded characters from both sides of the conflict. Flora Blackford, a U.S. congresswoman, struggles to help the government function while dodging bombs. Jonathan Moss, ace fighter pilot, exults in the dynamics of aerial combat. Irving Morrell finds a similar bloody satisfaction directing his corps of "barrels," the tanks of this alternate world. Mary Pomeroy, Canadian housewife, lives the life of a secret saboteur. Californian labor leader Chester Martin worries about war profiteering affecting his socialist principles. Fisherman George Enos adapts to life in the Navy. Concentration camp commandant Jefferson Pinkard earns advancement for coming up with a more efficient way to kill Negroes. Farmer Hipolito Rodriguez, a veteran of the earlier war, rejoins his CSA comrades for another round of fighting. Scipio, a black man with a secret history, shuffles his life away masquerading as a waiter, while bombs planted by the Negro underground go off around him. And so on for dozens of other protagonists, all striving to survive in a time of chaos.
Meticulous and inventive
I have not read the previous six books in this series, but have little reason to suspect they offer dissimilar rewards and longueurs. These books have come so fast and furiously into the world that they must have been conceived and produced practically as a single mega-novel.
Among the rewards: Turtledove is a meticulous, knowledgeable, inventive historian and tale-teller. His speculative premises are all exceedingly rational, plausible and pivotal. The chains of logic that he forges are always strong and capable of supporting his worlds. If he tells you, for instance, that his hypothetical Confederate state would find enthusiastic political support among Mexican agrarian types, then you damn well believe him. He makes that good a case. He flourishes a wide variety of viewpoints, from all levels of society and on both sides of the battle lines, and allows you to empathize with everyone, even scoundrels like Featherston and Pinkard. He stages battle scenes deftly and has a knack for nitty-gritty details like what's involved with going through boot camp or running the CSA spy corps.
But on the downside, Turtledove's actual pains and deliberateness contribute to a somewhat lumbering saga. Six hundred pages to chronicle six months of action? Norman Mailer and James Jones disposed of World War II in fewer pages! Additionally, unlike in Turtledove's The Guns of the South (1992), any primo SF shocks are eschewed. At one point, a scientist approaches Featherston with a plan to invent the atomic bomb for the Confederates, and Featherston turns him down. One gets the sense that Turtledove has put the fix in in advance: Any such exhilarating wild card would undo all of Turtledove's laborious bottled campaigns.
The lack of any weapons of mass destruction in this scenario is a giveaway to another aspect of this book, and that's its coziness. Oh, Turtledove is careful to depict the full horrors of combat—severed limbs, the slaughter of civilians, etc.—which I believe he truly feels. But the war here is still a nostalgic replay of a melange of World War II and the Civil War, and it looks actually inviting compared to the headlines we face daily in the war on terror.
Harry Turtledove has become the James Michener of alternate history. Lots of solid information, plausible, sturdy plots, serviceable characters, but nothing wild-eyed or shocking or fantastical.
Turtledove displays a commendable restraint in his deployment of celebrities, normally the banal downfall of most uchronias. General Patton, FDR, Louis Armstrong, President Al Smith—that's about the total cast of famous personages, and they're not onstage much, leaving plenty of room for the more engaging perspectives of the average people. — Paul
Also in this issue: Stable Strategies and Others, by Eileen Gunn
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