I got the new Harry Turtledove!

Cafe Society
1

American Empire: The Center Cannot Hold. Mr. Rilch and I went “halvsies”* on it, and I’m going to read it first, then let him have at it. I can’t comment, because we just got back from the store, but I’m sending this out as a call to anyone else who might have it, or plans to get it!

Those of you who read Blood and Iron, how did that grab you?

*On that cue, I printed out the Halvsie thread. He reacted much the way I did: it took a while for him to get into the groove, but by the end of it, he was ROFL. He especially liked Halvsie Stories: the Spielberg episode of True Stories is one of his favorite episodes of anything.

2

Blood and Iron was fascinating, if slower-paced than Breakthroughs, since the war has ended.

I thought TCCH was terrific! Bought it at Waldenbooks on June 25, the day it came out, and finished it by July 1. It covers a much longer time than any of the previous installments; by the last chapter it’s 1934.

Now I have to wait a whole year to find out what happens next. :frowning:

3

Yeah, Center is a good book, but really extended in time, and that was a little disconcerting. Bunch of neat cameos though, and overall I enjoyed it.

4

i got it, gimme a few days to finish it, I got Warcraft 3 and rented movies to distract me…

5

Just finished it, and I really enjoyed it. He plays coy with a few people, but I did like it quite a bit. Is there still another Colonization book still to come?

6

I have criticized Turtledove on these boards before, but I think his style is improving. He doesn’t indulge so much in the POV narration and the off-screen action anymore. (Those used to drive me crazy!)

For the record, I did like Blood and Iron. I am anxious to find out how Turtledove’s alternate-universe Hitler will make a comeback, now that he’s had his “beer-hall putsch.” I will purchase and read the new book.

7

Just finished chapter 3. Whoa.

Not too many food references this time.

And is this ever a dis: “The only thing Featherston can do is make a speech that sounds good if you’re a sorry so-and-so who can’t add six and five without taking off your shoes.”

8

Diku, I think the Colonization series is over at 7 (or 4 and 3)

haven’t read the Center.

9

Colonization is over for now, but Turtledove obviously is setting up for another big war between the US-led humans and the Race. He has so many pots in the fire he might’ve put off the Colonization books until he finishes off either the Darkness series (at least one more book is needed to complete) or the Great War series (which will obviously go all the way through to WW2, so expect another 4-7 books for this storyline).

He also has released a collection of short stories, Counting Up, Counting Down, which is quite enjoyable. Interestingly enough, his WW2 stories are not as interesting as his other work… which is a good thing, imho.

My big complaint about Turtledove is how he constantly puts the same thoughts in all his characters head. How many times do we have to read about some character think the following:

“He then chuckled to himself, realizing that it was very unlikely he’d live thirty days much less thirty years.”

:rolleyes:

10

Anyone care to summarize the last two Colonization books? I got bored after finishing the fifth one. As a reminder,

the last thing that happens is the US space station turns out to be a spaceship, and heads for the asteroid belt. My guess is that it’s going to secretly build a fleet of starships, since everyone has dismissed it as something of a joke.

11

He has one last Colonization book planned, that he says will wrap up all the loose ends. The working title is “Homeword Bound”, and he’s signed the contract with Del Ray for it. The hardcover is due out in 2004.

12

Uh, oh, the Race better look out, America is coming, and boy are we pissed!!
SPOILERS!!!
As for TCCH, i loved it, especially the cameos left and right. i assume that German guy’s adjunct was Hitler, and i liked the FDR double shots, without naming him either time. I expect him to work his way up to prez after the Mormon’s knock off Hoover, just in time to save the country from Featherston and the Featherheads. I knew Hoover was VP even when they wouldn’t name him, as i had visited his birthplace in Iowa, but also when Turtledove just drops hints instead of naming characters, you know someone ironic is gonna show up. This book jumped fast, characters that had just met a girl the last time they were in rotation would be married with a kid the next time they came to bat. Then the kid would be 10 and talking back to the parents. Suddenly the kid would be collecting Social Security…wait, it didn’t go that far…:wink:

13

I have to say I enjoyed the WW2 books, they werent bad sci fi. Also got me interested in (more legitimate) counter factual (what-if) history.

What was the deal with the sex scenes in the WW2 books though? not that I mind :slight_smile:

14

Tars, I really wish you had put those spoilers in a box!

Something I’m wondering about. Now, this would not be a spoiler, since the info’s right there in the front of the book for all to see. You know how he always has the map, with the borders highlighted and certain towns and cities marked? Pontiac, Michigan is marked. Wonder what’s going to happen there…?

15

[spoiler]What was the second one? The only one I noticed was when Dowling got a telegram from “a distant relative of the last Democratic president, who had a debilitating disease that left him in a wheelchair”.

So much for Pontiac, Michigan! Dang! I thought it was going to be the site of the Manhattan Project.

Every one of the last few times Sam Carsten appeared, I thought he’d be dead by the end of the sequence. Dude just keeps hanging on!

My jaw hit the floor when I realized that Galtier had witnessed Hemingway’s injury (it had to be Hemingway, right?). I think, though I haven’t had time to check the Great War books, that Moss also witnessed the train bombing that he survived.

Dowling’s adjutant: “What are the Japs going to do – bomb Pearl Harbor, ha ha ha?”

Poor Reggie Bartlett. He got away clean with busting Roger Kimball, and ends up dead over such a minor skirmish.

I’m basing this on nothing, but I think if Mary Pomeroy, nee McGregor, tells her hubby what she wants to do, he’ll be willing to work in tandem.

Chester and Rita Martin are going to get such a rude awakening when they arrive in California. So is Featherston. What the outgoing CSA prez said is right: it’s easier to criticize than to govern.[/spoiler]

16

I wonder if the Confederates will overrun Los Angeles in their Blitzkrieg.

or Des Moines . . .

17

Since I’m too cheap to buy books (if I like it, I read in two days, and I feel I haven’t gotten my money’s worth; if I hate it, then I fell I’ve been cheated), I get all my books at the library. And thus, I *hate, hate, hate, hate * authors who write long series. I’ve read one Turtledove, Guns of the South, which I enjoyed very much. I have tried to find others, but I always find book 3, or book 4, or book 74, and, also, I can’t keep the different series straight either.

But that’s my problem. You guys enjoy the heck out of them.

18

Sorry, i had assumed spoilers were now free game, so:


FDR showed up in TR’s funeral, as the wheelchaired relative that Nellie Jacobs wondered how he was hurt in the war to give him that injury. I was glad it wasn’t the last we saw of him. I was also glad Turtledove decided to focus on Hip Rodriguiz, i was wondering why he never had characters from that area as main ones after Hip first showed up, then vanished after the war was over. Turtledove included Sequoya people, in the beginning (until they all got creamed). Were the Engels Brothers supposed to be the Marx brothers or anohter Vaudville act? And good job catching the Hemingway thing, i completely missed it!

19

Tars:

[spoiler]I think the Engels Brothers were another of those little-bit-off references. Like in one of the Great War books, either Custer/Dowling or Morrell was introduced to a fast-rising young officer named DANIEL MacArthur, not Douglas. Circumstances were just different enough to change his first name.

I know the real Marx brothers were from Chicago, not New York, and that really was their name. Don’t know enough about them to know if that was an “Ellis Island name” or not, but I’m going to assume that, again, circumstances led to the name Engels rather than Marx. At any rate, that WAS the Marx brothers as they would have been in this timeline! I like them better the way they really were, though. Fake dyed beards…ugh!

Speaking of entertainment people, did you catch Mary McG. thinking, “There’s some motion picture actress they say has ‘It’…” Clara Bow, in case you were wondering

Mr. Rilch said, after the last book, “I wonder if we’ll ever see Rodriguez again?” He hasn’t read that far yet, but he’ll flip when he does!

Dowling seems really to have grown into his authority. He’s taken on Custer’s habits of growling and second-guessing, but he doesn’t take his own adjutant for granted. Good for him!

After Bartlett, I kept wondering, “Who’s going to be the other person to die?” No main characters died, besides him, but there were quite a few secondary losses! Marie Galtier, Hal Jacobs, Custer, TR, and Coolidge. Quite a body-count. But people are getting older, after all; it’s now been 20 years since the first Great War book.

Also, my heart weeps for Scipio/Xerxes. He’s become one of my favorites. I KNOW his past is going to catch up to him somehow. Maybe he’ll use his gift of speech to advantage. Or maybe he’ll be first against the wall.[/spoiler]

I don’t think the action moves unnecessarily fast. Some of these “kids”, like Cincinnatus’ son Achilles, have been around since the Great War. And as someone pointed out after “Blood and Iron”, a lot of people did come home and make babies after the Great War, same as they did after WWII, and this way, the ones who are children now will be adults during WWII.

The only one who seems out of continuity is Mary. She turned seven in 1914 or early 1915, then in 1924, she’s thirteen?

One thing I have noticed, though, is that Turtledove never shows weddings “on screen” except for once. I’m sure you know the once…and how it turned out. Now I know that if I ever again see someone in a bridal gown, the scene will end badly.

Not a spoiler: I misread the name of the engineer who broadcasts Featherston’s speeches. “OMG! Is this what Sam Goldwyn does, instead of movies?” But I don’t think it was a ref, just me being hasty.

Also not a spoiler, but I haven’t heard so many anti-Semitic cracks since Book 1. I’m sure groundwork is being set.

20

I haven’t finished reading it yet, but did anyone else notice the slip-up in the 1928 USA elections? Coolidge was leading in TENNESSEE early. No wonder he lost.