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Average Customer Rating:

Several bombs and a big dud

Customer Rating:

I have to say that I found the ending to this long saga neither strong nor satisfying. First off, you have to give Harry T a ton of credit for coming up with such an interesting premise and sticking it out for so long. However ... I hate to use the word "lazy" so maybe "hackneyed" is the best way to describe the way the last three or four of these books have turned out. The repetitiveness, the plodding pace and the inevitability of the conclusion have been written about quite a bit. But it wasa a crime the way he gave up on and disposed of his best characters (Ann Colleton) while glomming tons of ink on duds like General Dowling and Dr. whatshisname from Quebec. Or the oh-so-fascinating restaurant manager from Augusta. Tabernac! Why couldn't it have been the amazing Scipio/Xerxes to become a hero in the end, rather than his son? Harry: I know this was a huge undertaking, but we readers have run the marathon right alongside you. And we deserved better.

Strong Ending	Customer Rating:
A good strong ending to what at times seemed like a never-ending series. I liked it that the story goes beyond the end of the war and into the implications of what it would mean to reconcile parts of the country that have been separate for 80 years.

a Series that went on one book too many

Customer Rating:

I had to force myself through this last book of a series that started with such promise. I found myself thinking that I had read all this before... the same characters saying the same lines after the same battle... Turtledove's attempt to mirror the RL WW2 in this series is part of the problem, IMHO. The CSA is clearly modeled on the Third Reich, right to the "Asskickers" (Ju-87 Stuka is RL) dive bombers with their sirens and the camo-uniform on the special Guard units of Featherstone's version of the SS. Then, of course, is the genocide of the CSA's black population. Then there is the world stage - something only skimmed over by Turtledove in the series. How on earth did two powers - the abbreviated U.S. and Germany - stand up to the might of the U.K., France, Russia and Japan? A more balanced or fluid international situation may have been more credible. Sure, in the RL, the nations of Europe fought two horrible wars between 1914 and 1945, but the First war so greatly weakened them all that it influenced the Second - France was morally and spiritually exhausted, Britain was financial exhausted. Turtledove has four major wars fought within 80 years - wars that each devastate all the nations, kill untold numbers of men, and yet each nation seems to have the wealth and resources to bounce back for another round. And the characters? I don't recall any new ones entering the fold in the past two or three books - and thus the seemingly repeated dialogue and situations among characters with which nothing really new happens - the doctor mends another broken body, the General frets over another break through, the naval captain sinks another submersible. Yawn. There is the lack of building towards a climax; once you realize the war is essentially (prior to the nuclear weapons) just a relocation of the RL WW2 - from the surprise attacks on Ohio (Poland) to the battle of Pittsburgh (Stalingrad), to the use of rockets (V-2's) and new wonder tanks (Tigers & Panthers), there is no sense of "what may happen next"... even the plot on Jake Featherstone's life in an attempted coup seems to have been thrown in as an afterthought - there is no prior meetings of the conspirators, nor any opportunity to describe the mindset of those involved to orchestrate the plan, it is tossed away for a few pages of trite action. Again, I followed this series from the start, and looked forward to every new release until it seemed to descend into an endless loop. A disappointing end to a series with great promise.

Must read to complete	Customer Rating:
I wish Mr. Turtledove had continued the series. But this was a fitting was to end it. After 11 books, I can see why he wanted to end this series. A very good book, especially if you've read the other 10.

Ordinary, but fun

Customer Rating:

So Mr. Turtledove's epic comes finally to an end (or does it?). It is, like its predecessors, a piece of rather ordinary writing with much language repetition - there are times when I thought that, if Mr. Turtledove wrote one more variation on either "He was not wrong" or "Ain't that the truth", I'd use the book to light the fire. OK, the writing is ordinary and the characterisation flat. Mr. Turtledove will not win the Nobel Prize for Literature any time soon. However, for me, the interest lay entirely in seeing how far he could push the parallels between his World War 2 and the one that actually happened. The overall shape was predictable and in the end, there were few surprises. For me, the parallels are often pushed too far - it's hard to believe that an essentially rural, aristocratic society such as the original Confederacy could have developed technological advantages in weaponry over the industrial North. But then, Japan came from a feudal state at the time of Commodore Perry's 1860s' visit to sinking the Imperial Russian Fleet at Tsushima in 1905, a time gap shorter than that between Mr. Turtledove's Civil and Great Wars. Mr. Turtledove also has found it necessary to split the credit - thus the Confederacy develops V2-type long-range rockets (without intervening V1s) while the USA develops something clearly modelled on the equally German Messerschmitt 262 jet fighter. There is also some odd inconsistencies in names. While tank (sorry, barrel) commander Irving Morrell (= Erwin Rommel) is a necessary change, why call Patton Patton, but Eisenhower Ironhewer ("Eisen" is German for iron)? To me, Mr. Turtledove does perform, perhaps inadvertently, one major service. There is a tendency to look at the Holocaust and say, "It couldn't happen here" and then forget about it. Mr. Turtledove's clear answer is, yes it could. He was not wrong ;-). Given similar circumstances as existed in Germany in the early part of the 20th century and a charismatic leader who appealed to the country's sense of pride, betrayal and injustice, plus an "inferior" group to act as scapegoat, it could all happen again, even in a country that prides itself on its civilised values. We have seen the USA, a country proudly run by laws and not by men, discard those laws and turn to torture and murder, when confronted by an enemy that is in large part a product of fevered right-wing imaginations. Imagine what would happen if the enemy were real. Mr. Turtledove has left the door open for a sequel, the way he did with his "Invasion" series, and one eventually materialised, set some years in the future. Will the same thing happen here, given that his cast of characters are now mainly old and retired? And on what international events would it be based? One could envisage a cold war between Imperial Germany and the bitterly reunited USA, with perhaps an updated version of the 1917 Zimmermann Affair (where Germany offered to Mexico the return of the states taken from Mexico in the 1840s, in return for the Mexicans fomenting problems on the border and this keeping the USA out of the European war). But I'm sure that, if a sequel does eventuate, Mr. Turtledove will come up with something ingenious, and we'll all read it. Ain't that the sad and sorry truth? ;-)