Harry Turtledove: World At War (no spoilers, please)

I’m currently reading Into The Darkness, the first volume of Harry Turtledove’s World At War series. Unlike the alternate history he’s usually known for, this series is straight fantasy, occurring on a non-Earth world where war is fought with magic, dragons (air support), unicorns and behemoths (woolly rhinoceroses…think hairy living tanks).

I don’t know what problem my brain has with Turtledove. The concept is interesting. The plot is interesting. The writing is…meh. I’m currently riding the knife-edge between getting the next volume out of the library this week and not getting the next volume out of the library this week. I don’t remember when I’ve ever been quite so stuck between those two options before in my life.

The writing isn’t bad. It’s not like I want to throw it across the room. The writing, however, is also not incredible. I’m not racing through this first volume like a madman as I normally would be if I really, really liked an author or a book. It’s the most neutral read I’ve ever experienced. It’s adequate to keep me reading, but not good enough to make it enjoyable beyond wanting to see where Turtledove is going with the plot.

I just don’t know what it is about his writing that makes it the literary equivalent of tepid water…not nasty enough to dump into the sink, not good enough to satisfy your thirst.

Anyone else experience this with Turtledove? I think I wouldn’t be so confounded if it were actually outright bad.

Three comments:
(a) The series is not alternate history per se, but it’s also not pure fantasy. It’s a retelling of WWII, paralleled, with people and places and (magic) technologies in the magic world standing in for people and places and (real) technologies in the real world. (Not sure if you’d already realized that).
(b) I agree that Turtledove is just fundamentally not that good an author. But I can’t stop reading his stuff anyhow.
© That said, I think this was his weakest series.

Yes, I did realize that. And I can already see where he’s going with the Kaunians.

That’s exactly it! But it’s not the “can’t put it down!” type can’t stop reading. It’s more a “steady but not terribly excited pagecount per day” can’t stop reading. I think I am going to finish the series, after all.

I can burrow through just about anything Turtledove has written, but I could barely get through the first book in that series and had no interest at all in picking up the second volume. It did not capture my attention.

(His fantasy retelling of the Civil War did not hold my interest for even a hundred pages. It seems that fantasy tropes really bring out the weaknesses of his writing.)

The thing about his writing is that in his “big” books, the ones with multiple viewpoint characters, he doesn’t really do very well with characterization. Lets say there’s a fictional Turtledove character named Al. Now, the only thing you really need to know about Al is that he’s a naive farmboy who’s seeing the world for the first time. That’s really all you’re ever going to find out about his character. Fortunately, if you ever forget that about Al, you shouldn’t worry, because you’ll be reminded, each chapter, with lines like:

or

And the last chapter will have a line like:

I think he does it just so he won’t lose track of the characters, because in his single viewpoint books, like the Videssos books and Guns of the South, his characters tend to be much better developed.

Colonel Lemur listened to what Captain Amazing said, then nodded reluctantly.
(yes, I know I’ve used this line in every Harry Turtledove thread, but if Harry Turtledove can reuse it, so can I.)

My theory is that Harry Turtledove is more like a Dungeon Master in a tabletop RPG. He doesn’t care about the characters, he doesn’t care about the plot, what he cares about is the SETTING. The characters and the plot are just ways for him to take the audience on a tour of the setting.