Harry Turtledove's "Darkness" series

[aruvqan]

@Tom_Tildrum

Generally I think Turtledove has some decent ideas, but I find his writing to be a leaden slog. The problem with the Darkness series is that there’s no good idea to carry one through. Switching the names of the nations and the weapons doesn’t change the fact that all he’s doing is retelling the history of WWII in dull prose.

Every character has one characteristic, and he’ll inform the reader of that characteristic every single time – I get it, she has blonde hair! The simplest thoughts and motivations are spelled out in needless detail – “The place he needed to be, he realized, was on the other side of the street. This meant that if he wanted to be in that place, he was going to have to cross, he thought to himself; from one side to the other. He needed to think through how much he really wanted to be in that place, because that was how he would have to decide whether or not to cross the street.”

This. I actually think he would do better with graphic novels where he wouldn’t have to do physical descriptions all the time.

If I want long involved series, I have other authors I prefer [and even with David Weber I tend to find my eyes glazing over with some of his militaria infodumps and long since learned to flip past them on subsequent readings.]