American Empire: The Victorious Opposition

Rating:
Summary: The lines are drawn..
Review: I've enjoyed the two inter-war books in this series much more than the WWI books, which I felt bogged down badly (like, it must be admitted, the war itself). Picking up the pace really helps, and we move rapidly from the early days of the Featherston regime to the brink of the second world war. I'm glad to say that Turtledove also finally does in my least favorite characters, though I wish he had never used them in the first place. The whole Washington coffee shop sequence has been pure padding from the beginning, with the only nice touch being Nellie's actually getting to take her secret to the grave. I give this book four stars rather than five because we still have some characters we don't need, and for some of Turtledove's more irritating habits like reintroducing charcters repeatedly when it's hardly likely we've forgotten them and some stylistic quirks like having people agree with each other by saying variants of "I won't say that you're wrong." I am looking forward to the WWII books, and just hope he can keep the pace as quick as thee last two.

Rating:
Summary: an exciting read,however...
Review: I've just finished this book and I am impressed by it overall.The storyline keeps you guessing page after page as to what happens next and there is never a dull moment even during the lull between the action parts.If only Harry could lay off on the sex scenes I would not have thought of this as pornographic than it is a saga of what-ifs and what-thens....

Rating:
Summary: great alternative history tale
Review: In a world that never was but could haven been, the Confederacy won the War of Succession and the United States had to recognize them as a sovereign nation. As the victors, they imposed certain restrictions on the way the United States governed itself. When the Great War broke out, the United States was the winner, wrestling territory away from the Confederacy and bringing it into the union.

To prevent Britain from ever being a threat in the USA again, the army marched into Canada and made it a territory of America. Canada is no longer a recognized country and all laws and military rules come from the American Army of Occupation. Texas is part of the CSA but during the Great War, the US annexed part of the state naming it Houston and bringing it into the Union. Sequoyah is a part of the USA but like Houston and Kentucky (which was also forcibly brought back into the USA) they want to rejoin the CSA.

There are very few blacks in the USA and most of them live in Kentucky. Former slaves trying to leave the CSA are turned back at the US border. When the world plunges into a Depression, the fascist Freedom party elects Jake Featherston president. He uses strong-arm tactics against his enemies, takes control of the radio and newspapers and sets up internment camps for political prisoners and Red Negroes. He begins building tractors and farm equipment at a fast rate so that the Black sharecroppers become redundant. Many resort to fighting a guerrilla war while others go begging for take menial jobs in the cities.

Under the terms of the 1917 Armistice, the CSA military is sharply curtailed but Featherston finds ways of getting around the restrictions. He is slowly building up the military strength of the CSA to the level it was in 1863. His freedom party goons are agitating in Sequoyah, Houston and Kentucky for a plebiscite and the socialist president of the USA finally allows the people of those states to vote on whether they want to stay in the USA or leave and rejoin the CSA. Many people in both countries believe that another war between the USA and CSA is inevitable.

Harry Turtledove is the recognized grand master of alternative history and in AMERICAN EMPIRE: THE VICTORIOUS OPPOSITION; he shows his talent grows with each book he writes. The Freedom Party can be compared with the rise of the Nazi Party in our universe and just like the SS troopers; the high-ranking members in the party use the same strong-arm tactics to cow the populace. Instead of Jews being discriminated against, the Blacks are the scapegoats. France and Russia sided with the confederacy and when they lost the war, they had to obey the terms of the armistice but they are unhappy and ready to go to war again to regain their freedoms. France especially wants to regain Alsace-Lorraine from Germany but are wary of fighting the Germans a third time.

The characters in this novel are real people representing all walks of life so that the reader has a very visual picture of what life is like in this altered universe that seems similar but is so very different from our own. The CSA president is not a likable man and freedom lovers will despise him but the audience will understand that many of his constituents want him in office so that he can turn their country around and make it a world power.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: I couldn't even finish it - way too many characters
Review: In this book, Turtledove asks you to follow the stories of:
1) a revolt in Utah
2) a revolt in Texas
3) a revolt in Canada
4) some characters in Quebec
5) an increasingly powerful Confederate ruler and his cronies
6) a black family in Georgia
7) a black family in Iowa
8) a politician in New York
9) some characters in Mexico (now part of the Confederacy)
10) some US sailors in the Pacific

The sad part is, I probably missed some subplots (now that I think about it, there's a Confederate dissident who tried to assasinate the Confederate President).

Mr. Turtledove, it's OK to have multiple characters but this is ridiculous. This novel is all over the place (literally), and by page 200 (when I stopped reading), none of the stories were converging. Also, it's intellectually lazy to take what happened in Nazi Germany and simply apply it to the South. Why not use your imagination a little and apply a different set of circumstances rather than simply channeling Adolf Hitler through Jake Featherston?

Rating:
Summary: One minute to midnight
Review: Jake Featherston and his militant Freedom Party finally win power in the Confederacy, and begin their unstoppable push to exact vengeance upon the CSA's blacks and the United States of America. In the meantime, the USA spends precious little time wondering just what to do about Featherston and the former Confederate states now in U.S. hands, not to mention the endless trouble in Utah and Occupied Canada. By the time the United States stand up to look Featherston down, it is too late.

All in all, an enjoyable book, and an excellent conclusion to the American Empire series. Some might complain about the similarities between the Freedom Party and the Nazis, but the connections and contrasts in my opinion make the book more interesting, not lame. It deserves the five stars I gave it.

Rating:
Summary: Too fast, too shallow
Review: Let me preface this review with praises to Harry Turtledove: the man is an alternate history genuis. He writes books that change this event or that assumption, and fills in what could have happened instead, using research, intelligence, humor, and plenty of interesting characters. I still believe his best book was the very wellspring that brought us this one, the haunting "How Few Remain." HFR set the stage for a seperate Confederate States of America that defeats the USA and serves as both enemy and irritant to their defeated neighbor to the north. The book takes place in the 1880s where an attempt to recapture the CSA ultimately fails.

The three books following HFR are the three "The Great War" series, describing a North American-based WWI between the CSA and its allies Britain and France, and the USA allied with Germany. This book is the third in the "American Empire" series. "Blood & Iron" follows the aftermath of the Great War complete with 1920s-style inflation and the rise of a demagogue. "The Center Cannot Hold" continues the tale, and "The Victorious Opposition" leads us to the brink of WWII, complete with a June 22, 1941 invasion.

While the last date was a slavish following of our timeline, many other events varied. The Republican party died out after the USA's defeat in 1865, and the major US parties are the Democrats and... the Socialists. During the Great War series there is a failed Communist uprising... by CSA blacks (closer to 1905 than 1917). The backstory leading up to this book is so rich with detail that it would be foolish to start with Victorious; it's the third book in a series but really the seventh in the HFR timeline.

And the question is what do you get if you read the previous six books and open up this one? I'm left with the same feeling from "The Center Cannot Hold," namely vertigo from how quickly this novel moves along. If I went back and dated each section of this book, I would expect that most of them are one to three months apart. Turtledove rotates through his major characters such that we might not hear from the same one more than once a "year" or even longer.

Unlike "Center," Turtledove kills off three important people in this work, and moves their viewpoint to a descendent. Just as Arthur McGregor died and we began to follow daughter Mary, new viewpoints emerge with character deaths here. I'll not give away any surprises but I was disappointed that the new characters weren't more different from their predecessors.

The biggest flaw with "Victorious" is one I alluded to in the first paragraph: the slavish devotion to our timeline. Not only is an invasion modeled after Hitler's invasion of Russia, but so are far too many other events. While the Socialists and Democrats move in and out of power (unlike Roosevelt's 4-term presidency), other events stick far too close to reality. CSA is Germany, President Jake Featherstone is Hitler, and the coming Holocaust will be against the blacks. In 1936, the CSA hosts the Olympics in Richmond, and Featherstone has his Freedom Party put their good manners on until the last foreigner leaves. The USA serves several roles, as Russia, as France, as England. It attempts to pacify Occupied Canada (terrority won from England and France during WWI) without complete success.

The other lack is character growth. Lucien still drinks applejack and cracks dry one-liners, Cincinnatus still fears Covington, Kentucky but can't stay away, and Anne Colleton trusts and loves no one. Any change in the characters is due to plot development rather than personal growth or failure, with the exception of Jonathan Moss. He turns into the USA's answer to Arthur McGregor, and for much the same reason (and I suppose it's still due to plot development).

If you've stuck with the series this long, see it through, but I found this one the equivalent of Welch's after drinking claret.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Finish and Beginning
Review: Loved it.
Summed up the first six (seven) books of the series and set the next trilogy up nicely.
>Do yourself a favor. Read the book.

Rating:
Summary: The Prelude to War
Review: Overall, this is an excellent book. Like Mr. Turtledove's other works, it has more than one character. In fact it has more like 16 characters spaced arond North America, from a Sonoran farmer to a patriotic Canadian in Manitoba to a fat US general.

In pervious books, Harry Turtledove has created a world where the South won the Civil War (War of Secssion in these books), and the USA loses another war in the 1880s (Second Mexican War). Finally the Great War comes and the US and her ally Germany wins agaisnt the CSA, Britain, France, Russia and Japan. The US is finally on top, and the Southerners get a taste of defeat. They don't like it much, and the "Freedom Party" is created. The South then takes a turn for worse: inflation, depression etc. It parallels Nazi Germany where the Hitler figure here is a man named Jake Featherston who heads the Freedom Party. In 1933 he wins the election and the last book ends at his inauguration in 1934.

We start up here in The Victorious Opposition shortly after that. This book goes on into the early 1940s and ends with war beginning. Turtledove does an excellent job of showing the advancements of that time, such as radios and refridgerators. The Socialist led USA ignores the extremely conservative CSA which is actually doing well being led by Featherston. Planes labeled "Confederate Citrus Comany" fly about, but why would they need machine guns on farming planes? Dams are built on rivers to stabalize the flooding and giving the people work during the Depression. In this book the Confederate States are so much like Nazi Germany: anti-black riots, the building of camps, rearming quietly, and something that angered me, the returning of Kentucky and Houston back to the CSA. Even the 1936 Olympics is held in Richmond and it is the scene of something big for some characters.

Speaking of characters, we see the passing of three of them and the coming of three more. Everyone is getting older, more children are born, while more die. We await the next installment dealing with World War Two....

Rating:
Summary: Trudging through alternate history
Review: The echoes of war loom over a divided North American continent in Harry Turtledove's American Empire: The Victorious Opposition, the third book in the middle trilogy of books. Starting with The Great War saga, Turtledove has told a tale of alternate history, with the Confederacy having won the Civil War and still being around in the early 1900s. The American Empire trilogy has told the story of the inter-war years, and Turtledove's ideas are fascinating. Unfortunately, the writing doesn't keep up with it.

Harry Turtledove really confuses me sometimes. I love the concept of this series and I love what he's doing with it. The idea of a Confederacy taking part in World War I and the rise of a Hitler-like figure in the downtrodden South that sparks World War II is fascinating. However, the way he writes just annoys me. His constant repetition (he uses the same metaphors over and over) and his need to introduce his characters every time we see them in the book are just grating. We know that Abner Dowling served under Custer during the First World War and that Dowling didn't like him. Even if we hadn't read the previous books, we got that the first time Turtledove introduces Dowling in this book. We don't need to get it again the next time, and the time after that. It's like Turtledove thinks that his readers don't have the attention span to keep all of his characters straight. While that may be a valid point (previous books have had a lot of viewpoint characters), Turtledove has actually toned that down in this one, having only a few characters act as main ones. Others are introduced as some of the previous ones die off, keeping the cast to a manageable level.

This brings up another point as well. Turtledove is not afraid to kill off some of his characters, so it's nice that you don't quite know who's going to survive and who's going to live. However, some of the characters' fates are so obvious that it felt really boring, just waiting for the inevitable end to the storyline. Some of these characters we have been following for six books now, so it seemed a shame that their deaths were so telegraphed. Even when they weren't telegraphed, they seemed very perfunctory. Two of the characters just die off with no real ending to their ongoing story, which bristled. We've been waiting six books for the payoff to their story, expecting some sort of comeuppance or resolution, but nothing happens. The character just dies and that's it. End of story. I was not amused. Turtledove also spends time developing his next set of characters who will carry the next series, with the sons and daughters of our well-known characters finally getting their time on stage so we can get to know them.

Another fault with the book is one I had with the Blood & Iron as well. Too much of the history is a pale imitation of what really occurred in history. Some of it is unavoidable. Jake Featherston is Hitler. The blacks in the Confederacy are the Jews from our real history (brought to life in a very chilling scene late in the book). The United States is Britain as it led up to the war (though at least Turtledove avoids having the President make a speech about "peace in our time"). However, Turtledove doesn't make it different enough to be as interesting. Kentucky, a state that the USA has controlled since the war, is the Rhineland, even down to the Confederacy moving in troops when they promised to keep it demilitarized for twenty-five years. While all the events in the book inevitably led to the conclusion we all know about (World War II), the events themselves should have been at least slightly different. That's what made The Center Cannot Hold more interesting. Different events occurred, surprising the reader even as we know where it will ultimately lead.

With all of this wrong with the book, how were the characters? Just like other Turtledove books, they were hit or miss. Some of them are interesting (Chester Martin and his attempt to unionize the construction industry in California really has me wondering where Turtledove is going with this one, which is a good thing), while others are bland and boring (Nellie Jacobs has to be one of the most worthless characters I've ever read about). Others are intriguing just because of who they represent in real history (Featherston, Clarence Potter). Overall, Turtledove does a passable job.

One good thing about the book, however, is the mood. As the book reaches its conclusion and war looms on the horizon, there's a palpable sense of fear and resignation that, because of Featherston, war is unavoidable. The United States has finally drawn a line that he can't cross, and when he does (just like in real life), the inevitable conflagration occurs, leading us into the next series. The tension is very well done, making the ending much better than the rest of the book.

The Victorious Opposition is a triumph of concept over prose, and I think that's why I can't read any other series by Turtledove. The concept of this entire series has kept me hooked for six books, when other, better-written books have turned me off and forced me to give them up. If you are a fan of alternate history and can get past the wretched prose and obvious characters, then give this book a try. If you are not in that select group of people, then give it a miss.

(...)

Rating:
Summary: Freedom!..Here We Go!
Review: The final episode in the American Empire series shifts into a higher gear as we build up to the second world war. Considering the slow pace the previous two books (Blood And Iron, and The Center Cannot Hold)had, I was quite satisfied with the more energetic pace of Victorious Opposition.

As expected, the whole storyline revolves around the imbittered receintly sworn in president of the CSA, Jake Featherston. Taking charge of the impoverished and demoralised country, he soon starts out on a programme of recovery which includes rearming the "Confederate Citrus Company" airplane fleet, a massive tractor building programme (so gaining practise mass producing tanks), conscripting a massive White only labor work force whilst taking revenge on all those who wronged him and the CSA. Taking back what is rightfully CSA property is also a priority and Kentucky is the first to return to CSA.

Basically following the lines of reality 1930's Germany, we follow the fortunes of those supporters of the Freedom Party.

Party stalwart Jefferson Pinkard ends up running a prison camp for political prisoners but soon realises that he has to take on a more challenging task, dealing with the growing numbers of Black prisoners that are arriving in their thousands as Featherston takes his revenge on them. You can see where this storyline is going...

Hipolito Rodriguez starts to enjoy the status of Freedom membership and his family are all going through the motions of Youth Squads and the benefits of belonging, however I can see a little doubt in his mind beginning to grow...watch this space.

Those who have stood against Featherston are also having to come to terms with the new order. Clarence Potter suddenly finds himself a Colonel in his old capacity of intellegence gathering after an unlikely situation that saw him attempting to take Featherston's life but saving it instead.

Anne Collerton gets her just desserts when she rejoins the Freedom Party, Featherston sends her off to France as unofficial ambassidor and keeps her well down the ranks and in her place.

Vice President Willy Knight attepts a Coup on his leader and fails dramatically. He finds himself in Pinkard's prison.

However the best moment of Featherston's revenge spree has to be the final run in with his ultimate advesary and long time reason for his bitterness, Jeb Stuart Jnr. This is one of the best highlights and reading through the sub chapter a couple of times is quite enjoyable.

The plight of the Black man in the CSA is taken up by the weary and lonely Scipio and his family. Reading his plight through this episode, one does have to remind oneself that this is the work of fiction.

In the United States and Canada, we see the end of three big characters that have been part of the scene since the beginning of WW1 (with one starting off in How Few Remain). Nellie Jacobs dies suddenly after cutting herself and getting blood poisoning as a result. She goes still hating men but tries to confess to her family about Bill Reach in her last gasps. She fails.

Sylvia Enos was the supprise death, having been accidentally shot dead by her drunk lover, Ernie who is still a fustrated man, having been injured in a very manly place while being an ambulance driver in Quebec in WW1. He was, of course, rescued by none other than Lucien Gaultier...

The swaggering Quebecouis finishes his life 'on top' however I have always found him rather a boring character. No great loss.

These three characters have their offspring to continue the storyline.

Cincinattis Driver continues to risk life to better his family's situation. His foolish return to Kentucky sees him finish this book stranded in the now CSA state.

The Military men find themselves having to catch up with the world with Abner Dowling, Irving Morrell, Sam Castern and Jonnathan Moss gearing up for the darkening clouds of wars. Moss more so for revenge as his famous wife and baby are killed by a bomb mailed to the by none other than Mary Pomeroy.

Chester Martin starts off the Union movement in California after suffering the conditions of workplace harrasment by the bosses of the huge housing project he is working in.

Flora Blackford is re-elected to congress but she is to little to late as Jake Featherston finally calls on the USA to hand back everything they took from the CSA in WW1. As the world starts falling apart in Europe the enevitable happens. On the morning of June 22 1941, Jake Featherston finally takes revenge on the USA...

All in all a much better conclusion to what was a long drawn out trilogy. The main space to watch in the upcoming WW2 series is what will Japan do.

As I have already asked in previous reviews of Harry Turtledove, a bridging Novel between How Few Remain and American front would really complete this running series of alternate North American history, prehaps this year, in the meantime lets "settle accounts"- roll on April 2004!!!