Has anyone read any of this guys books?
I started and put down Settling Accounts, In at the Death
What a load of twaddle:(
Concentration camps in America, genocide of Negroes,atrocity after atrocity, shooting of civilians, mass bombings of the USA and CSA.
I know this is supposed to be alternative history but ffs sake Turtledove goes a bit overboard
I’ve read a lot of them. Settling Accounts- the Fight to the Death is the last book of what became an eleven book series. I would start out with How Few Remain, the first book in the series, which starts the premise off, and go from there. If you jump in at the last book, it won’t make much sense, since you missed how they got to that point.
I think that Turtledove is great with ideas, but he is very prolific and the writing tends to suffer as a result of that. The descriptions in the book tended to be repeated over and over again.
I read his stuff. It isn’t classic literature, but it is easy to read fun. For the fifteen minutes or so I get to read a book these days, before falling asleep, something like Joyce just isn’t going to work for me. Turtledove’s stuff is fun and not too challenging. He does write at a ridiculous rate though, and that certainly reduces the quality.
It’s true that In at the Death is hardly the best place to start - part of the whole point of that is the build up to such things that are otherwise implausible, like the camps and the bombings.
I’m a big alt history fan but I find Turtledove unreadable. I can’t say whether it’s because he produces too many books or it’s just his style but the writing clunks.
I also loath the way he just rewrites actual history in a different setting - I’m thinking of the American Empire series which charts the rise of an American equivalent of the Nazis. As the alledged Master of Alternative History can’t he actually think up something new?
I just finished “The Two Georges” which he co-wrote with Richard Dreyfus (seems odd to me-didn’t know he wrote) and it was a fun read. Interesting concepts; the colonies never left the British Empire, steam powered cars, dirigibles.
I’ve tried his stuff a few times after seeing people enthuse about him online, and I’ve had to force myself to finish what I’ve started. Silly ideas, yes, but what really got me was his awful, awful dialogue. The man can’t write a conversation to save his life. Forget conversations, I don’t think he ever managed a single spoken line that didn’t sound stilted and artificial. It’s all “banter banter painfully obvious joke explanation of the painfully obvious joke more stilted banter PLOT PLOT EXPOSITION BACKGROUND INFORMATION banter joke”.
His earlier stuff is better. The “Agent of Byzantium” stories are quite good, for example.
I’ve never read anything he’s written by himself, but I quite enjoyed Household Gods that he co-wrote with Judith Tarr. It’s the only time-travel book I’ve ever read, and even though the protagonist got really tiring really quickly, it was quite enjoyable. Apparently having a co-writer solved a lot of the problems I’ve heard about him–it wasn’t terribly clunky, it moved along quickly, and it wasn’t part of a bloated series.
I like him. Like villa said, I find it light, enjoyable reading.
The alt-history is completely absurd and not at all believable, but it’s something fun to read.
Turtledove has a new book coming out tomorrow, actually, “Hitler’s War”, where the Munich agreement never happens, and Germany and the Allies go to war of Czechoslovakia.
I read his “Worldwar” series, about “lizard” aliens that invade Earth in the middle of WW2, planning to find an Earth inhabited by Middle Ages technologically equipped people, only to find a more advanced populace.
His stories are fantastic, but his writing is terrible. I had to push myself hard to get through the books, and would have abandoned the attempt if the actual story behind the words wasn’t so good.
I just finished “Opening Atlantis” which I found enjoyable. I’m looking forward to the other two books planned.
One of my favorites was “Guns of the South”
I actually enjoyed the Worldwar books, and then the second set, Colonization. However, the final book – where the humans go to the Lizards’ Homeworld – was just excrutiating. Painful, painful dialogue, and the sense that he was getting paid by the word, and not at a generous rate, for that matter.
I enjoyed the second Atlantis book, though it wasn’t nearly as good as the first.
Dug Guns of the South, the Two Georges, and In The Presence of Mine Enemies. His series are pretty good too, but the stand alones are better in some ways. I prefer the alien invasion one to the alternate civil war, but it’s pretty close.
I guess this shows the differences of opinion here - I much prefer the series, and found Guns of the South to be the worst he has written. With In the Presence of Mine Enemies pretty damned close.
Though I will say I did enjoy Ruled Britannia, and that is a “stand alone” book
Oh, right, I forgot that was Turtledove – entertaining read! I’ve been reading a lot of Cornwell recently, and got the two confused.
Put me in the camp that think Turtedove is a terrible writer with very original premises. When I read Guns of the South I think he used the word “butternut” to describe the color of the Confederates’ uniforms roughly eleventy-billion times in a paperback book of approximately 300 pages. It drove me nuts.
The thing I remember most about Turtledove’s writing is that in one story he had a character named “Evilla”. Care to guess this character’s defining trait?
Speaking of alternate history, has anyone read Robert Conroy? I have already finished:
1945: Japan refuses to surrender after the first two atomic bombs
1862: Britain declares war on the Union after the Trent incident.
Next up: 1901, in which Kaiser Wilhelm gets all bent out of shape about the US for some reason.
I liked 1901, haven’t read 1945 and I couldn’t finish 1862. I thought the last one was horrible.