Rating: 
Summary: So Many Threads, so Little Time...
Review: Turtledove is great, his alternate histories manage to be very authentic (well apart from the use of English slang as I can testify) while not dragging the reader into factual tedium.I find the Race more interesting than the humans however. The use of alien idioms is obviously human generated but still effective. My favourite is: egg-addled. It's a term all of us should use! I felt particularly sorry for Ttomalss in the Russian gulag, which brought home to me the fate of Stalin's human victims. Turtledove resists the opportunity to make the Race a terrible breed of monsters from the stars. Indeed, in work like 'The Two Georges' turtledove seems to have sympathy for Empires (naturally his PhD is in Byzantine history). The Race are an ordered, civilised people, unlike the squabbling humans! Turtledove successfully throws up many scenarios from across the globe with such fluid transitions you wonder how much research the supremely-bearded master of alternate timelines does every day. As a bit of a sci-fi geek there are some things I don't understand. If the Race has the ability for interstellar travel why don't they have better weapons than tanks and jets? What happened to lasers and transporters? Why didn't they bring or manafacture more nukes along for the ride? The answer is that humanity could not have put up much of a fight with such items banging around. Why are the Rabotevs and Hallessi also slow and cautious in development while humans are innovative? Isn't that a bit convenient? Won't all the nukes going off around the place seriously irradiate a much bigger portion of the planet than shown so far? Just how many males does the Race have? Also, wouldn't it have been easier to wipe out humanity with a DNA encoded virus or something? If they have holographic projectors why not something like this? I mean we already have or will have such a weapon. But this is nit-picking. Turtledove is excellent entertainment with brain. I would have liked to have seen more of Hitler's reaction to the race, but this was probably omitted for ethical reasons. Go Turtledove! fly away!
Rating:
Summary: A GREAT NOVEL
Review: Turtledove's epic account of the struggle between humanity and the Lizards continues in a very satisfactory and intriguing fashion. Although the story is a little slow at times, it successfully captivates our attention through poignant characterization and thought provoking implications. I am certainly excited to read the next installments of the series!
Rating: 
Summary: too lost in the scandals
Review: Volume 2 is not nearly as good as volume one. The author gets too lost in the sex thing which detracts from the theme of the series.
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