- ISBN13: 9780345464057
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
Harry Turtledove’s remarkable alternative history novels brilliantly remind us of how fragile the thread of time can be, and offer us a world of “what if.” Drawing on a magnificent cast of characters that includes soldiers, generals, lovers, spies, and demagogues, Turtledove returns to an epic tale that only he could tell–the story of a North American continent, separated into two bitterly opposed nations, that stands on the verge of exploding once again.
#1 by DrewFamily on April 22, 2010 - 2:45 am
Being a fan of another alt-hist writer I thought I’d give Harry Turtledove a try. Maybe I should have started with an earlier novel, but I went for a more recent work assuming the author would have developed his writing skill.
Unfortunately, I was disappointed. I thought “Settling Accounts” was a humorless bore with stilted plot development and empty characterizations. Even the cliffhanger ending sputtered out with a yawn. The in-your-face constant use of the “n” word,especially in combination with Turtledove’s idiotic, parallel universe bending concept of “population reduction,” is a straight up insult to every American, black or white, who lives in the South. Perhaps the author hoped those sentiments would stimulate thought and provoke discussion of the subject of racial inequality in the United States, but I found the novel far too juvenile to consider this within the realm of literary exploration. It was simply ugly.
Darn, I was hoping to have a new author to follow.
Rating: 1 / 5
#2 by homeskillet on April 22, 2010 - 3:43 am
The condition of the book was not as was stated. A section(group of pages) of the book was separated from the spine. Good story though.
Rating: 1 / 5
#3 by Randy Stafford on April 22, 2010 - 5:08 am
This is the eighth book in Turtledove’series though it’s sort of being marketed as the first in a trilogy. It is not a suitable entry point to this universe. Even long time readers of this series will find this book annoying.
It exhibits all the usual, unfortunate features of Turtledove’s padded novels. The Homeric character epithets are frequently repeated. There’s very little onstage battle action for a series about war, and all the important battles are given a worm’s eye view. There are frequent puns and ironic turns of phrases — here German Nazi phrases find their way in to the conversations of Freedom Party people.
Unlike his Worldwar series which featured many historical characters, the only ones of note here are General Patton leading the Confederate blitzkrieg which takes him to Lake Erie, General McArthur (who seems to be doing this world’s version of Inchon by landing at the mouth of the James River), Louis Armstrong (who, after being forced to entertain frontline troops, makes a break with his band to USA lines), and President Al Smith who dies and is replaced by LaFollette.
The war outside the American theater is interesting but only briefly covered with Russia’s Czar battling, with the British, the USA’s ally Germany and Japan’s empire building in the Pacific. But there’s precious little alternate history speculation in a book, however fast reading, that’s 623 pages long. The relationship between the USA and its troublesome Utah Mormons is the most interesting feature of this series.
But this book adds new annoyances. Several of the characters say things which are not that insightful but are hailed as such by fellow characters. Their “insights” just come off as clumsy ways for Turtledove to foreshadow and explicate via dialogue. And not only do we get the usual long interior monologues. We get references to the thoughts the characters don’t entertain. This is a way to highlight the most striking feature of the book: the vicious racism or casual indifference of the characters, with the exception of USA Congresswoman Flora Blackford, to blacks. Hipolito Rodriguez, a character we’ve come to like, has disturbingly little problem committing genocide. And that, the psychology of genocide, is the main theme of this book.
Rating: 3 / 5
#4 by Robert J. Zay on April 22, 2010 - 7:12 am
I really enjoy the story Turtledove is telling in this series, but it seems a little bit as though he is getting paid by the word. No, it seems more than a little bit like he is getting paid by the word. In fact, it seems a lot like he is getting paid by the word.(getting the picture?) And how many times does he need to go on (and on and on) about a character who sunburns easily smearing zinc oxide on his nose, or what each character was doing two novels ago every time he brings them back into the story. Turtledove does a geat job with the alternate history part and the “if this happened this way then this would be like this”, I just think it could be a much faster(and better) read if it wasn’t weighted down with so much repitition and unnecessary dialogue.
Rating: 4 / 5
#5 by Andy on April 22, 2010 - 8:12 am
This book was free (for the Kindle), and that’s part of the reason I read it. The genre of alternative history has always been something that sounded interesting to me, but I’d never read any.
Well, the writing is absolutely terrible: Cliches abound; literary crutches that didn’t work a first time reused several times, sometimes within a few pages; terrible representation of Southern dialect; lots of things that just annoy the heck out of me.
If I had realized this book was 640 pages long, I would have given up on it early. But, I’ll give Turtledove this, I cared about a few of the characters and finished it up because I wanted to know what the heck happens. Unfortunately, it’s part of a trilogy so I only got a small payoff at the end — one I saw coming, at that. I won’t be picking up the rest of the trilogy.
Rating: 2 / 5