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Updated Sunday 15 May, 2011 12:18 PM |
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This Day in Alternate History Blog
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Settling Accounts:
Return Engagement I had a quick read
through this book while waiting for an Indian take-away.
It made the time pass quickly, although not as quickly as a Peter F.
Hamilton or a David Weber. Chances are, if you like serious AH, you’ll hate this book;
it has characters who should not exist in this timeline, far too many
similarities to OTL WW2 and gets a little preachy at times.
Turtledove could have written a great book, even working from the same
premise, but no, he had to rewrite WW2. That’s a shame,
because the world of the Great War could have been fantastic. Will Germany be crushed between France and Russia?
We don’t know – Turtledove keeps many of those details away from us.
There’s also no real incentive for the Japanese to be involved in this
war – they’d be too busy with China. These
little problems ruin the story. The downside of the
book; fewer characters. That makes
for a tighter book, but surely some of them will get some peace?
Some of the subplots have been going on for ‘years’!
The death of my particular favourite was a shock – even if it’s a
practice of Turtledove to keep the story about its characters.
Turtledove gets too preachy at times, although he avoids most of the ‘weapon’s
of choice’ clinches.
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