Harry and me -- largely, parting of ways seen

[Sangahyando]

@Darth_Sensitive

However, what I like most about Turtledove is his skill at writing big world altering events through the point of view of anonymous people at the bottom. I don’t mind having Robert E. Lee as a viewpoint character, but I really enjoy following grunts and civilians through the wars (even if he does feel the need to constantly remind us that the redheaded guy in the US navy sunburns easily - I get that he does it to recenter us on the character, it just can become a bit much). War is hell for his characters, both on the front lines and at home, and I appreciate that he humanizes them (even the invading aliens).

(My bolding) – yes: poor old highly-sun-sensitive Sam Carsten – many readers seem to come to thoroughly hate him, just because Harry harps so endlessly on this trait of this character. I’ve also come across folk who loathe the Quebecqois (sp?) characters in this series, reckoning them and the whole Republic of Quebec element a complete waste of time, space, and everything. (I’m decidedly fond of the Quebec bunch, including their “adopted by marriage” member Dr. O’Doull.) One of the haters was wont to get particularly irate about “that bloody tedious old Quebecquois farmer who was always talking to his horse”…

He also really shines in short stories. Behind that link is one from the Sasquatches in the PNW series, but I really personally love “The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging”; it’s personally one of my all time favorites.

Thank you for this – gives access to a number of Turtledove short stories, for which I’m very grateful. The “State of Jefferson” (Sasquatches) one, is a fun read – I love the Flintstones-ish incongruity of a sector of basically benign, almost cliche-standard, US society, where the protagonist and his family just happen to belong to a nine-feet-tall-and-covered-in-hair subset of the population.

Have read a fair number of short stories by HT, published in book form: those accessed via your link, mostly new to me: once more, thanks.

On the whole, I’ve found his short stories and most of his stand-alone novels to be, for me, enjoyable reading, and generally well executed and worthwhile. (A few of the stand-alone novels, I’ve disliked – for assorted reasons, sometimes of the “it isn’t him, it’s me” kind.) It would rather seem that it’s chiefly in his series, that his annoying qualities tend to come to the fore.

I started the Supervolcano books earlier this summer, and I’m enjoying that it’s not a big war that’s just a retelling of the fall of the Aztec empire. Just a scattered family doing their best (I’m one book down, so don’t tell me if it becomes the fall of the Aztecs in book 2).

@Meurglys

I wouldn’t say was a fun but I have read 15+ of his books, and started quite a few others. I tend to read first volumes of series when they come out but lose the urge to continue by the time v2 appears…

My favourite series of his, though, is the Supervolcano trilogy. As Darth says, it’s all about the people actually affected, with nothing set in the corridors of power, except maybe the local mayor’s office! And a couple of the officers running a displaced persons camp, iirc. To me, it wasd a welcome change from his books where every second character was an analog of a historical figure…

I made notes on all three volumes - v1 can be found here, and includes links to the other two…

Meurglys: thanks for link – but I think I’d rather (should it happen at all) tackle the Supervolcano books direct, without maybe-preconceptions. Over – probably – most of the past decade, I would appear to have come to a conclusion to the effect that “any further series by Harry, are going to suck: phoning-it-in-cranking / churning-it-out-on-autopilot, etc.”; so I’ve avoided all his more recent series. Various posts in this thread, have me wondering whether I’ve been too hasty / prejudiced in this. Especially now that he seems to have got World War II out of his system. For a while, he seemed to be utterly endlessly strip-mining that particular source of inspiration. I greatly liked Worldwar and the Darkness series; and thought the “TL191” (profuse follow-on from How Few Remain) series was OK; but after that, he just seemed to spew out series after series connected with the 1939 - 45 “unpleasantness”, causing me to want to yell, “ENOUGH !” I feel that I should give some of his more recent series, including Supervolcano, a shot.

[Jonathan_Chance]

Well, one of the things I realized early is that Turtledove doesn’t primarily write alternative history. Rather, he writes military fiction with an alt-history twist.

His most successful series have been military fiction even more so than, say, Clancy’s books are.

Venturing out from that is some great work on his part. But his central conflicts tend to be military in nature.

[Sangahyando]

Fair enough: just – there have been many other wars in human history, besides that business with Adolf, Benito, and their Japanese counterparts. For a while, Turtledove seemed to have got fixated on that one to the point of, “there is no good thing that there can’t be too much of”.