This is the first novel in Turtledove's American Empire series, which picks up where his last series, The Great War leaves off. Turtledove writes a genre known as alternate history. These series of novels were crafted on the presumption that the Confederacy won the Civil War and achieved independence from the United States. They fought again twenty years later in the Second Mexican War (How Few Remain) and again in the World War I period. The U.S. aligned itself with Germany while the Confederacy aligned itself with England and France. The U.S. was finally able to defeat the Confederacy this go-round. Blood & Iron picks up following the end of the war. In the Confederate States, they are plagued by having to pay reparations to the U.S. causing tremendous inflation. Enter Jake Featherston, who we know from the previous series of novels. Convinced that the aristocracy present in the Confederate War Department is largely to blame for losing the war as well as his own inability to advance in the military despite a great record, he forms the Freedom Party. The tactics of the Freedom Party, as well as Featherston's own speeches are eerily reminiscent of the Nazi Party. At one point he even talks about "giving the gas" to blacks on whom he also lays a great deal of the blame for the lost war. Their Socialist uprising in the middle of the fighting hurt the Confederacy a great deal. Meanwhile, in the U.S., winning the war is not enough to secure a third term as President for Teddy Roosevelt. He is unseated by the Socialist Upton Sinclair as former soldiers react to coming home and finding themselves at the mercy of capitalist factory owners. The main characters are people known from the previous series. If you haven't read it, chances are you will be lost if you pick up this book and try to read it. As always, he has a great deal of them. However, he does not promise that all of them will survive and I believe that he has started out with so many because of this. It can be confusing at times because he jumps around so much. Each chapter contains some vignettes about certain characters and it can be hard to follow. I also found it hard figuring out how much time had passed in certain instances. Some of the characters we've known seem to have nothing to do here. They are just living their lives and not doing anything spectacular. People who seemed interesting during the war seem somewhat dull now. However, my general feeling is that Turtledove is building up towards the Second World War. Most of his characters talk about the Confederacy and the U.S. fighting once again. The novel didn't really grab me until about the last one hundred pages. Before that, I found it hard to plow through. In this last bit, Turtledove seems to get his groove and many characters become interesting again. In particular, I liked how he contrasted two Canadian farmers. Lucien Galtier is in the new Republic of Quebec. The war benefitted him and he is living a good life now. Arthur McGregor lives out in Manitoba and is embittered at the U.S. for the execution of his son who may or may not have been involved in a bombing back during the war. His bitterness is focused on punishing the U.S. and the soldiers who are occupying Canada. His bitterness allows him to justify the killing of innocents to "punish" the U.S. for its wrongdoings. Lucien reading about McGregor and lamenting about how his life could have been so different is a really profound part of this story. If you are already reading the series, this novel is good because of what it is building up to. However, if you haven't read the series, you will be confused. I thinkThe Great War novels were much better, but I am excited as to what this novel is leading up to.
In this novel, Harry Turtledove wraps up his alternate-history saga of the first World War. My one piece of advice here is to use the map at the front of the novel, and use it often. I did, if for nothing else than to keep track of where everyone was. The premise of the series is that the Confederacy won its bid for freedom during the Civil War, and for the third time in fifty years, they go head-to-head with the United States. This time is different: the United States has as its ally the powerful German and Austrian armies. The Confederacy is aligned with Canada, Great Britain, France and Russia (with the Japanese thrown in for a good skirmish every now and again). After finishing the previous novel, The Great War: Walk in Hell, which felt like I was sitting through extra innings at a zero-zero baseball game, it was refreshing to finally see some movement in the war effort. Just who begins making the breakthroughs? Well, I won't spoil it for you. Throughout the three novels in this series, Turtledove has woven a great selection of characters from all sides of the war. To really know them, a reader should start with the first novel of the series, or it will seem like they are not given depth here; the depth comes from the history we have of their involvement in the war over the last three years. Turtledove is not above sacrificing his characters - not everyone he began following in the first novel The Great War: American Front will survive. It would be unrealistic in many ways to expect this, yet I had become so attached to certain ones that I teared up at the news of their death - and was flooded with relief when one such interesting character manages to cheat death. Turtledove describes with great detail the advent of the modern war machines. Tanks, or "barrels" as they are called here come to be a real deciding factor in who is victorious. Yet my favorite part was the description of the flying aces in their machines. The war evolves greatly during the novels - the flying aces remark on it often. And it is interesting to see how fast it has all changed and who has managed to capitalize on it the best. The Canadians were starkly contrasted with each other as well. Though none were happy at the beginning of the war with the United States' invasion, the citizens of the eastern province of Quebec have a much different reaction than the residents of centrally-located Manitoba. Hate has also come full circle here as we see what happens when a very intelligent man loses a child and lashes out at the occupiers. We also see the hate coming full circle in other places. Though the United States was very happy to help arm the Socialist Negroes for their uprising in the Confederacy and create havoc, they are not welcoming to the black population at all. Factory workers who went off to fight in the South watched their jobs be taken over by former field hands and eventually see these same men who were shooting at them in the Red uprising handed a gun and a commission by their own Confederate government. How will the aristocracy who once flourished on the backs of the Negroes react? How will the disenfranchised white soldier returning from war react? If there's one fault to the novels it's just how much they do jump around. For a casual reader, it's easy to get lost and not be able to follow all of the stories and remember who is doing what and where. On the other hand, I enjoyed seeing so many different angles of the conflict. More than once, characters we have gotten to know in totally separate instances come together in The Great War: Breakthroughs on opposite sides. Who do I root for? I have come to like both people for different reasons. We also don't know what's happening in the rest of the world during this time. I felt at times as isolated from the European continent as the soldiers did; they did not seem to have much of an idea of what was going on over there at various times. We are given quick snippets of information at times when it seems crucial to the story. I suppose with as many fronts as Turtledove is following, anything more would've made it a lot more confusing. For the most part, Turtledove has kept his novels showing the war through the eyes of the common man, rather than pivotal historical figures. We have watched the Socialist Flora Hamburger rise from virtual obscurity to her own seat in the House of Representatives, but who has ever heard of this woman? With the notable exception of General Custer and President Theodore Roosevelt, we see just how much the war affect the average citizen; the average soldier. The novel ends with many of the stories not wrapped up. Yet this is the end of the series... Turtledove, I believe, has become as enamored of the characters he developed as we have. There is another series about to begin: American Empire. I am looking forward to seeing what happens next.
If there's one definite sentiment in this book, no matter who's side you're looking at it from, it's that war is hell. This is the second novel in Harry Turtledove's alternate history series about the first world war. The series itself was set up in his novel How Few Remain where he gives us his version of what would have happened had the Confederacy won the Civil War. Turtledove's The Great War series sets up the sides for the first World War somewhat differently than what history has actually given us. The Confederacy is aligned with France, Great Britain, Canada, Russia, and the Japanese against the United States, Austria, and Germany. We hear a great deal about Teddy Roosevelt, who is now the President of the United States, but quite a bit less about his counterpart in the Confederacy. There is a rivalry between Roosevelt and General Custer - who did not make his "last stand" shortly after the Civil War, but lives on in this novel as an ancient Union General. Other than these two, we hear little about familiar historical figures of the time. This novel is about the great stalemate of the war. Battles are raging everywhere, yet little progress is being made by any side. All that is rising is the body count as neither the Confederate nor Canadians yield to the United States forces in the least. The Confederacy is also dealing with the uprising of the Socialist Negroes, and the United States is containing a secession attempt by the Mormons in Utah. Because of the lack of great movement on either side, I found that the novel seemed to drag a bit at times. However, this is the effect I believe Turtledove wants us to feel. How could the people of the time feel about the war when there are so many battles, yet not much actually happening. Turtledove introduced us to many characters in the first novel of the series, The Great War: American Front, and he follows them throughout this novel. The characters are magnificently written. I felt as if I really knew them as the fighting stretched from the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii) to the Atlantic Ocean. Even as the fighting machines change, the people throughout the story largely remain the same. And the machines do change. Aeroplanes, once used only for spying on the enemy's troops, begin to evolve into something with which to take the offensive as machine guns with interrupters are strapped on them. Barrels (or tanks as we know them) are first introduced to move in on enemy lines. Turtledove is not above sacrificing his characters for the story; something I commend him for and cringe at the same time. I felt an emotional investment with them, though not with any one definite side. Neither the Confederacy or the United States is completely righteous, making the war all that more grueling. At times the novel is somewhat hard to follow, as Turtledove jumps around between the various characters. However, this is necessary to convey what is happening to each of them at the same time. It is just as fascinating following a displaced former owner of a Southern plantation as it is the former Atlantic fisherman now drafted into the U.S. Navy; the unhappy Confederate soldier who will forever be denied a promotion; the flying ace over the Canadian provinces; the ambitious Confederate submarine captain; the adjutant trying to stop Custer from causing incredible amounts of death; the Canadian farmers in Manitoba and Quebec who are adjusting to living in an occupied land; and many more. This novel is not one to be put down and picked back up at will. Since there are so many characters to follow in such a different historical context than we are used to, reading Walk in Hell requires a great deal of concentration. I highly recommend these writings for people who are history buffs. Those these books are usually listed in the science fiction and fantasy area, a person really needs to be able to stick with the history aspect of the times.
This novel is the sequel to How Few Remain. In these novels, Turtledove supposes that the Confederacy won the Civil War and follows the course of history in a North American continent that is now divided into three separate countries. World War I is beginning in this novel. Led by President Woodrow Wilson, the Confederate States of America (CSA), along with Canada have aligned themselves with Britain, France and Japan. Theodore Roosevelt is the President of The United States of America (USA) and has formed an alliance with Germany. The USA prepares to fight a war on three fronts: both in the north and south, as well as in the Pacific Ocean, all the while protecting their harbors on the Atlantic Coast. Unlike How Few Remain, Turtledove chooses here to create new characters and follow their lives rather than using well-known historical figures. In some ways, this was a much better and more interesting read, although I think a better merging of the two (similar to John Jakes' style) would've worked best. The main benefit of Turtledove's style in this novel is that we get a deep view into so many different areas of the war and at very different angles and viewpoints. Neither side is completely right or wrong, so I never felt like I was being pushed to root for one side or the other. The novel covers only about the first year of the war, so at times it seems to plod along. George Enos is a fisherman out of Boston. He is captured early in the novel by the CSA. The time he and his fellow shipmates serve in the detention camp gives the reader a good idea of how deep the hatred runs on both sides of the argument. Particularly disturbing is the treatment of his ship's cook, a black man named Charlie White, receives, as well as how easily a CSA soldier slays one of the shipmen who mouths off. Flora Hamburger is a Socialist Party worker in New York. With support from Abraham Lincoln, the Socialists have managed to attain great power in the United States. The Socialists are treated as communists for the most part, but their voices are being heard and they are influencing decisions in Washington. Their actions have not gone unnoticed in the CSA, particularly by the freed black men down there. Flora's family is about to become deeply involved in the war. Her sister is carrying a soldier's child, though they were only engaged at the time he left to serve. She also has two younger brothers who are coming up on the age of conscription. Nellie Semphroch and her daughter, Edna run a coffee house in occupied Washington DC. She is a spy who manages to send the information she gleans from CSA Officers who come into the coffee house. At the same time, she is trying to keep her daughter from making bad decisions in her life - and especially away from a CSA Officer: Jeb Stuart III. Anne Colleton is a wealthy plantation owner and member of the aristocracy in the south. The freed slaves who work for her are not really treated all that much different now than when they were slaves. Her house servant Scipio harbors a dangerous secret from her and manages to show nothing to her face. The freedmen are planning a Socialist uprising and one of the leaders is living right at her plantation. Anne's brother is one of the first soldiers to suffer the ill effects of the chlorine gas and survive, though his does not seem to be worth living. Lucien Galtier is a Canadian farmer in the province of Quebec. Quebec is quickly occupied by USA forces and he tries to protect his family while at the same time staying loyal to his country. Arthur McGregor is a Canadian farmer just north of the USA-Canadian border in Manitoba. He is nearly killed when he ventures into town one day to buy his daughter a birthday present. After a bombing, USA troops round up men to be executed until the bomber's identity is disclosed. He is saved by the fact that his daughter is with him and one soldier shows a bit of compassion in not killing her father in front of her on her birthday. Cincinnatus is a freed black in the CSA. One night he and his pregnant wife protect his former boss from USA soldiers. Because of this, he ends up working as a spy for the CSA in Covington, KY. He feeds them information about what is being unloaded from barges and the general destination, but has no true loyalty. The only motivation is protecting his family and keeping them all alive. Abner Dowling is the adjutant to General George Custer. Custer is the only historical figure we get any great detail on. He is painted as way too old and too stuck in the past to be commanding. Dowling has some sympathy for the General, but realizes that his actions are costing a great many men their lives. Reggie Bartlett is a CSA soldier trying to ward off invading forces in Big Lick, VA. He is with one of the units that first experiences the poisonous chlorine gas. Jefferson and Emily Pinkard are a young couple in Birmingham, AL. Jefferson works in a steel factory and Emily takes a job in a munitions plant soon after the start of the war. Her job causes her to begin showing effects of poisoning. Things Jefferson has seen in the way people are treated at the steel factory make them both ripe to be swept up into the upcoming Red Revolution. Colonel Stephen Ramsay and Captain Hiram Lincoln are two CSA soldiers who form an alliance with Indians to fight off the USA along the border between Kansas and the CSA state of Sequoyah. Captain Irving Morrell is leading US troops south from Arizona into the CSA state of Sonora. Seaman 1st Class Sam Carsten is with a navy battleship which invades Pearl Harbor to take it away from the British, then must defend the islands from attack by the Japanese. Paul Mantarakis is a USA soldier of Greek origin. In the beginning of the novel, he is with Custer's troops. After the Mormon's stage an uprising in Utah and attempt to stop all rail traffic from going through their state, he is sent to help squelch the rebellion. We are also given a great look into the beginning of the use of airplanes for both spying and some aerial bombardment. With alternate history, I find I have to pay much more attention to the details than I would in one of Jakes' or Michener's books. With those stories, I have a general idea of how the story ends, but here the story has a totally different frame of reference. I found all of the Socialist references in particular to be very interesting. Turtledove leaves us hanging at the end of the novel with the southern blacks - being supplied and egged on by the USA - staging their revolution. Just another incentive to start the next novel.
Do you know what it is?
This is what begins the Harry Turtledove novel How Few Remain. Special Order 191 was Confederate General Lee's details of where every Confederate Army division was supposed to go and what they were supposed to do. In the real world, this order was lost by a Confederate courier and made its way into Union General McClellan's hands.
Now suppose that didn't happen...
Without going into the details of how the Confederacy won the Civil War, Turtledove sets this piece twenty years later as bitterness has now set in between the Confederates and the USA. A second engagement takes place and features familiar faces in different roles: Theodore Roosevelt brings together a renegade regiment out in Montana, Samuel Clemens is a newspaperman in San Francisco, General Custer is attempting to quell a Mormon uprising in Utah, Abraham Lincoln is about to break from the Republican Party to join the Socialist Party, and Frederick Douglass is a reporter writing from the battlefront.
What instigates the confrontation is the Confederacy purchasing two territories from Mexico which enables them to stretch from sea-to-sea. General Jeb Stuart is working with the Apache Indians (including Geronimo) in an attempt to keep Union soldiers out of the newly-acquired territories. France and Great Britain have sided with the Confederacy while Germany is attempting to remain a neutral observer.
This is essentially the first novel in his The Great War series in that it sets up what will happen in the next four novels about World War I. Alliances have been formed, continents divided, people coming into power at times different from what has actually happened in history.
This genre is known as Alternate History and makes for a fascinating read. Turtledove is thorough in his research and characterizations which makes the story so believable. The only problem is that so much detail and history can sometimes drag the plot along. Another thing I disliked was that he focused on people in history we already knew, rather than bringing in his own characters.
Note: This is not a sequel to Guns of the South which I previously reviewed. Though the premise is the same - the south winning the Civil War - in this novel their only help comes from the countries of France and Great Britain.
What if is a question that we ask at various turns in our lives, and why not history. What if all the votes... nah :-)
Harry Turtledove is probably the best writer of alternate history that I've ever come across. Guns of the South is the first book Turtledove wrote using the premise of the Confederacy winning the Civil War.
For the feat to be accomplished, he adds a bit of science fiction in the form of time travel when a group of white supremacists in the early 21st century South Africa get their hands on a time machine. They travel back and equip the army of the Confederacy with AK-47 rifles.
Events do not turn out quite the way the white supremacists planned, however, and by the end of the book it becomes clear that their original purpose will not be accomplished. They have, instead, unleashed upon the world a continent divided and bitter.
Turtledove uses actual historical figures such as Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Abraham Lincoln and Nathaniel Bedford Forrest to tell the story. What surprised me most was when I read the afterword and discovered that the characters I had thought he invented for the sake of the story were actual people, he just wrote a story about them. Mollie Bean is actually a woman who fought for the Confederacy, though her path takes a different turn than it did in reality.
Unlike other Turtledove novels in the alternate-history genre, he doesn't seem to jump all over the place with this one. The story is fairly contiguous and easy to follow.
The characters are well-written and we grow to care about them, moreso I felt than some of the other books. It was interesting to think about Robert E. Lee having to make the tough - possibly even life-threatening - choices when dealing with the white supremists.
From the extensive operation, care and maintenance of the AK-47's to the divided continent's political climate, Turtledove writes a detailed and compelling story. He has done some very thorough research. This allows him to portray the more well-known historical characters such as Robert E. Lee and Nathanial Bedford Forrest (who is in our history credited with starting the KKK) in a way that seems to be more realistic rather than becoming one-dimensional.
Though not a part of his Great War series, it seems as if the premise he sets forth here is the jumping off point for those novels, he just dropped the time-travel aspect of it.
Alternate history is one of my favorite genres. If you like this type of genre, it's a masterpiece. And if you've never read any alternate history before, this book is the place to start.
