I seem to have a talent for wanting to discuss obscure books that maybe 2 or 3 other dopers have read. 
So, I figured I’d start yet another thread that will get perhaps 2 or 3 posts.
Anyone reading the Settling Accounts series, the third series in Turtledoves alternative history revolving around a Confederate victory in the Civil War…and what happens afterwards. We are now in the WWII period and things are getting…interesting.
So…anyone reading this? What do you think?
-XT
I don’t like what he’s doing to Jake Featherston. Throughout the series he’s been shown as a crude, and yet resourceful leader. Always cold and calculating. And yet with the Pittsburg debacle, he threw that out of the window.
Some of the other things I didn’t like (just my opinion, full of spoilers), that he killed off Mary Pomeroy and Tom Colleton, two of my three favorite characters. He also hasn’t killed off the two black characters, they annoy me. I do wonder who’s going to take over Tom’s point of view. I want another Canadian, so we get a feel of what’s happening up there.
I do enjoy what he’s doing with Jefferson Pinkard. He’s by far my favorite, and I hate that I know in the end, he’s going to lose. Actually, that’s my major beef with this series, we all know that the South will lose this war. We knew it before it even started, which takes away from the suspense.
I just don’t like the fact that he’s trying so hard to parallell it with what really happened. It just seems like lazy writting. Using characters that wouldn’t have been around should the South really have won the War of Succession (Patton is the most blatant example of this, as other dopers have pointed out) just seems as if he’s not really trying.
At least Featherston agreed to start a nuclear weapon program. Gen. Potter also has an interesting storyline.
Although it’s has a lot of flaws, and Harry Tourtledove desperatly needs an editor, I will still read every book he puts out in the series. I just can’t put them down.
Lots of spoilers here…fair warning.
I think he’s trying to make Jake Featherston=Hitler. Same kind of instability. There was even a brief passage where Featherston is contemplating using amphetamines (speed), like Hitler did.
I figured Mary was toast…never really liked here anyway since she killed Moss’s wife and baby daughter. THAT pissed me off big time and I was waiting for her to get her’s. And I figured Turtledove is making Canada=Ireland under the British…figure to see a full blow rebellion next book. I was bummed about Colleton though.
Which two black characters annoy you? Scipio and Driver? I actually like both myself, but figure Scipio is toast.
I’m also sure the South will lose…but will the North win? After all, if the British, the French or even the Japanese get the bomb around the same time its possible that both sides could go down.
-XT
Turtledove has developed the habit of sticking fairly close to the history that he’s aping. Notably in ‘In the Presence of Mine Enemies’ it’s a straight rip off of something that happened less than 20 years ago. At least when Beam Piper was doing it he centered it on somewhat obscure points of history.
I like what’s happening in ‘Settling Accounts’ (I started a thread when it came out). But I think it’s all too telegraphed sometimes. I can still be surprised (when Custer through the bomb back during the parade I was frankly astonished) but it seems lately he’s busy making hay while the sun shines and trying to produce a lot of material at once.
Though when he doesn’t follow a strict historical pattern I still find him entertaining. Both ‘Ruled Britannia’ and ‘Days of Infamy’ lit my fire pretty well.
There are two more in the ‘Settling Accounts’ series. ‘Grapple’ in 2006 and ‘In at the Death’ in 2007. Be prepared to be patient. There’s also what looks to be some more stuff in the pipeline.
And it’s not so obscure. There’s a fairly good Turtledove group here. Me, Zev, Captain Amazing, Weirddave and some others are the regulars. Welcome aboard!
Have a cookie.
lol, thanks. Cookies always appreciated. 
I read a lot of military sci-fi and there doesn’t seem to be that many folks here who enjoy it as much…though I’m pretty widely read with fiction in general. I’ve been reading Turtledove for years. My favorite series by him is the In Balance books about an alien invasion during WWII. I have really enjoyed this series too, though you are, its pretty predictable…just exchange the Confederacy for Germany in WWI and WWII, Jews for Blacks, etc.
Sorry I missed your thread on this when it came out…link to it if you like and I’ll check it out.
-XT
Oh, there’s a lot of direct parallels. Propaganda, Gobbels. Int, Canaris (Someone’s going to try to kill Featherstone…), and quite a few more.
And Jake’s only stable… as long as nobody crosses him.
Pittsburgh seems to be a direct parallel to Stalingrad too, at least in how the Souths army was surrounded and eventually starved into submission. That was pretty much the death knell of the South too.
What will be intersting is why the US would end up bombing the South with an atomic bomb (if indeed they do)…with the loss of that army the South has nothing at all to hold the North back. They pretty much are to the wall already, especially with internal rebellions by their black population (and this is before they find out whats REALLY happening in those camps…something thats going to come out since the US is advancing through Texas while all this is happening).
One interesting thing…no wonder weapons. The South seems to have the equivelant of the M1-Garand and perhaps something like the Panzer IV with a 75mm main gun (and a submachine gun and Stuka Dive Bombers and such)…but no real wonder weapons. I’m a bit disappointed too, in that I’d say the US, with its higher technological and industrial base would at least have equivelent small arms…even with those damn Socialist at the helm.
-XT
I’m not entirely looking forward to the next book, because I like Scipio, and it doesn’t look good for him right now. I do think killing off Mary Pomeroy made sense, though. I don’t really know where else her story could have gone. I’m wondering if Tom Colleton is actually dead. It’s not the first time in the books that Turtledove led you to believe a character who was alive was really dead; he did it with Hip Rodriguez.
Yeah, I tipped a while back that Scipio and his family are going to be the ones to go into hiding and then end up in the camps to give us an inside look. Shame, too, as Scipio is one of those fairly rare Turtledove characters that show real character development and growth.
On review, it’s more a discussion of Turtledove than of Drive to the East. Sorry about that.
I like Scipio too…but I think his story is nearly done. Now his son…I’m thinking his story will really start now as an insurgent leader.
I was never a fan of Mary Pomeroy, and was rather glad to see her go. Also, I kind of expected it. The whole story reminded me of events in Ireland, especially the short lived rebellion against the British, and how people in Ireland were initially not very sympathetic…until the British executed all the leaders instead of leaving them to rot in prision. I think that same thing is going to happen, with a huge amount of outrage by our Northern cousins. You even have the whole Northern/Southern Ireland thing going between the French areas and the English ones.
I hope Tom Colleton is still alive…but being shot in the back and then shot again reaching for a gun, I’m just not seeing it. Maybe…I hope. I rather liked that character.
Hip Rodriguez is an interesting character…but I’m pretty sure he’ll have a rather bad end. Also, what he’s doing right now…kind of creeps me out. I thought for sure he’d be one to either not want to go along, try and help the prisoners, or maybe even eat his gun because he couldn’t take the guilt.
I really like how Abner Dowling is developing too…and Sam Carsten. Anyone else think he’ll wind up and admiral yet?
-XT
Scipio, Sam Yeager, and Viridovix. I think those are the only three characters in any of his books that show character growth.
Yeah, Hip is everybody’s favorite death camp guard, isn’t he? A character I sort of like, and he’s a really minor character, is Saul Goldstein, Featherstone’s answer to Joseph Goebbels.
Yeah, and one of the true oddballs. His bit about ‘Thank God this time it has passed over me.’ a while back that shows he sees the pogrom coming early and is simply thankful that it’s someone other than the jews as a target is haunting to me.
Don’t forget Liu Han in WorldWar. From ignorant peasant woman to self-assured maoist revolutionary leader is pretty good.
Yeah, Rodriguez actually says something similar…if it wasn’t for the blacks it woudl be him and his people feeling the burn. He even speculates what will happen to him and his people after all the blacks are gone…and probably for good reason too. That kind of madness tends to feed on itself and continue on, as new racial scapegoats are found.
Sam Yeager was one of my favorite characters in the In the Balance books…I was shocked when he gave the info to the aliens that enabled one of our cities to go into the flames (course, I was shocked when it turned out to be us that wacked one of their colonization fleet ships too), but it made sense. I really liked when WE went to THEIR world too…especially when we figured out how to do it better than the lizards. I wonder where that series is going…or if there will even be any more in it.
-XT
When I first read it, I wasn’t surprised, I figured we’d do something like that. But I was more disappointed in that we got caught.
And when we went to their world, it wasn’t the first time he had something they didn’t. I remember when they invaded the British Isles and Churchill said that if they didn’t leave, he’d use terrible weapons that weren’t nukes, or something like that.
It was poison gas.
Nitpick: Dorothy, Moss’s daughter, was no longer a baby when she was killed; she was school-age. But yeah, that wiped out any sympathy I had for Pomeroy.
I think Dowling’s days might be numbered. More references to his unhealthy weight, plus he took time to praise Toricelli, his [del]successor[/del] adjutant. I can see a massive coronary in the near future; I just hope he can liberate Camp Determination before that.
I also wonder about Flora Blackford. Taft might become her friend-with-benefits, or he might be poised to take over her storyline if, as she speculated, she becomes the target of a people bomb.
Turtledove and his repetitions, I swear. Okay, so we no longer have to hear about how Pomeroy hates Americans, and now we won’t have to hear about how odd Scipio looks, to whites, in his tux.* But now we’ve got, Michael Pound does not want to be an officer, Leonard O’Doull is used to speaking French, and every other character thinking “For better or for worse—no, for better and worse…”
One interesting real-world parallel. We’ve seen quite a few people live longer than they did in our timeline, or take different paths, but I’d been wondering if/when we were going to see someone die earlier than they did in our timeline. Mr. Rilch didn’t know who the Navy man with a mouthful of teeth who lived on a peanut farm in Plains, Georgia and answered to a Miss Lillian was, until I told him. :wally It was cool, though, that Turtledove portrayed him as the alpha male of his community, even if that did mean he had to be taken out.
*Not that that’s not preferable to what we’re about to see him go through. I do look forward to hearing about Cassius; perhaps he and Moss will meet. But it’s still heartbreaking to think that Scipio lived his whole life just to come to this.
And you can’t forget that Confederates and Yankees could sound alike. And other Navy people assume Sam is stupid because he’s a Mustang.
I don’t know either, can you tell me?
Jimmy Carter.
Aww…
That was kind of mean for him to get killed like that.
Don’t forget Ernest Hemingway offing himself after killing Sylvia Enos!