I haven’t read it yet but I had no idea it existed so I thought others may have missed it as well. It’s called Bombs Away and is set in an Alternate 1950s where Truman decided MacArthur was right and Nuked China.
It appears to be another one of his Variety of Viewpoints books where he has a stable of characters and tells the story by jumping from person to person. I never read the War That Came early but I loved World War and the South Wins WWI and WWII series. Just got this one for my Kindle.
I’m not reading it unless it has a graphic sex scene featuring, let’s say, Hunter S. Thompson.
“Harry Turtledove has a new book out” isn’t really news; it’s more like an ongoing state of affairs. He’s a very prolific writer who constantly has new books out.
Bomb Away, released on July 24, 2015, is his newest book. But his previous book, Joe Steele, was released on April 7. Things Fall Apart was released on December 2, 2014. Last Orders was released on July 15, 2014. So four novels in just over a year.
True he’s prolific but like I said, I had no idea a new series was even starting, let alone released.
After reading the reviews, I think I will pass on this one.
No Hunter S. Thompson sex scenes yet. which is good, because the book’s set in 1950, so Hunter Thompson would have been 13. It’s not a terrible book. It’s not a great book. It’s the sort of book that you’d like if you like Harry Turtledove’s multiple viewpoint alternate history war series. If you liked the Southern Victory books, you’ll like it.
Count me out. I cannot stand Turtledove’s multiple viewpoint style. Interesting ideas ruined by turgid repetitive writing. IMHO
Turtledove is clearly working under the ‘Make Hay While the Sun Shines’ philosophy of authordom. I can’t really blame him for that. But I swear that his solo stuff is better than the series.
As for Bombs Away? I finished it on vacation a week or so ago. I had just finished Joe Steele - which was dissatisfying in the extreme - and wasn’t aware that BA was the beginning of a new series until there was about 100 pages left in the book. It is another multiple POV and it can be done well - Niven and Pournelle can be very good at it - but I kept getting confused in who the hell was who.
Joe Steele suffered from the same problem that In the Presence of Mine Enemies did, which is that what works as a short story doesn’t work so well as a full novel. The short story Joe Steele was punchy and rat-a-tat with no dialogue and not really much in the way of characters. Here’s the beginning of the short story:
But to translate that to a novel, you’ve got to change it, put in stuff, and that can be hard.
Thanks OP – interesting to hear of. I like a lot of Turtledove’s fiction, but have been “out of the loop” re him for a few years. Felt overdosed on the World War II-related stuff, cascades of which he seems to have been pouring out in recent times – not a matter of loathing everything WWII-ish that he has ever written; but he seems to have come down to milking that conflict, from all angles, to utter exhaustion. (Also, it would seem a bit more difficult to get hold of Turtledove’s books where I am, than in the US.) With Bombs Away being set a few years post-WWII, in an era about which Turtledove has not written a lot, I feel inclined to seek it out.
I know what you mean – the turgid repetitiveness is a turn-off for many people re Turtledove, and the multiple-viewpoint approach is not everyone’s cup of tea; but I’m not greatly bothered by the former, and like the latter. What is bad news for me, is when Turtledove gets pun-happy – I abandoned The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump in outright nausea, well before the end.
Concur: in his stand-alone novels, his worst vices (repetitiveness, great prolixity, and general heavy-handed style) tend to be less prominent; and he often displays more originality and true inventiveness in the stand-alones.