Rating: 
Summary: Entertaining despite weak characterization
Review: The final volume in Harry Turtledove's second trilogy-within-a-tetralogy, "American Empire: The Victorious Opposition" depicts an alternate world in which a vengeful Confederate president drags North America back into the chaos of war. As such, it completes the bridge between his "Great War "trilogy and his "Settling Accounts" series about the Second World War. Such a conflict has been long expected by his readers; it was plain from the end of the alternate First World War series that the Confederacy, like Germany after the real First World War, was down but not defeated. His white Confederate characters have been unanimous in their thirst for payback, a thirst that Turtledove's Hitler-stand in, Jake Featherston, exploits in his rise to power.
This volume manages to retain considerable suspense in spite of the inevitability of the future conflict and the repetitiveness (as other reviewers have mentioned) of his efforts to fill in the characters' backgrounds. The way in which Featherston tightens his grip on the South, while at times too staged (most of his opponents seem all too willing simply to fold their cards and leave once Featherston tells them to), has a gruesome fascination given the foreknowledge of what will result. Another factor is the cast of characters, who after six books have well-defined personal histories and are worth following simply to see what will happen to them.
That Turtledove is not shy about killing off his characters helps as well, even if there is almost a "clearing the decks" feel to this volume. In many ways it seems a sign of boredom, something that is also reflected in the growing sameness of their characterization. As the series has worn on, many of the characters increasingly share the same thoughts, use the same slang, and often seem simply to be going through the motions. This is particularly evident when contrasted with the new characters he introduces, such as Armstrong Grimes, who are more distinctly portrayed than many of the people readers of the series have come to know after all this time. Though this doesn't detract from the overall story that Turtledove is developing, it is a sign of sloppier writing than readers of this enjoyable series have come to enjoy - and hopefully a trend that will be reversed in future volumes.
Rating: 
Summary: WWII Turtledovestyle Is About to Start
Review: The strongest outing of the "American Empire" trilogy still possesses an abundance of the flaws in logic that have marred this entire series, starting with "How Few Remain".For those who don't know, this series kicked off with HFR, wherein the Confederacy won the Civil War, backed by Britain and France, and that a second War was lost by the USA, setting the stage for an alternate WWI, an alternate Pax Americana, and soon to come, an alternate WWII. The Victorious Opposition is again burdened by a huge logical flaw. As Pearl Harbor and 9-11 showed, attack America and you will reap a whirlwind. Here, the Japanese bombed Los Angeles and the war ends with a treaty leaving things as if the brief war never happened. ...! This is just an impossibility, even by the logic of Mr. Turtledove's universe, where a revenge-driven USA has waited decades to get back at the CSA, Britain and France. The idea that any form of America would just be willing to let bygones be bygones for such an action is logically unforgiveable. However, this sin, although it does taint this book, is a sin of the prior book in the series. Mr. Turtledove's books are always intellectually stimulating, but he does seem to have a blindspot regarding logic, as this problem, actions defying the laws of logic laid down in his own universe, is one that seems to permeate his writing. Speaking of permeating his writings, the American version of the Holocaust, directed towards African Americans in the CSA, is well underway by this point. When we last left our characters, Jake Featherstone had won election as President of the CSA, and was well on his way to becoming a Confederate version of Hitler. This book continues this trend, working its way up through the moment of war beginning again. This is a true transition book, with a lot of characters dying, by various means and for various reasons. Perhaps the reason why this novel is the best of the "American Empire" books is possibly because of anticipation, an unspoiled sense of anticipation. For we know that the next books will present a new version of WWII. As things stand now, no logical flaws yet have marred the anticipation of how Mr. Turtledove's creativity will render such an epic event. The problem is that such an event could have only one result: a CSA, British, French, Russian and Japanese defeat. Here, Germany would not have started WWII with a subpar navy: instead, it would have been Britain and France with navies far removed from their level of greatness. By that standard alone, Great Britain would be starved out with ease. Here, Russia is still under the Tsars. Therefore, no upheaval of the earth-shattering degrees that resulted in the Soviet Union's industrialization, which is what enabled the Soviets to hold back the Germans; plus here Germany had the lands of Poland and Ukraine under their control - much closer to Moscow. France would've had no Maginot line; France, driven by revenge after the Franco-Prussian War in our world, got their clocks cleaned by the Germans in WWI. But for the British Empire's soldiers, the Germans would've been able to outflank the Allies in the opening months of WWI, and WWI might really have been over by Christmas of 1914, with a triumphant Germany. France hasn't won a war in almost 200 years; they wouldn't be able to change that in Turtledove's universe. Also: USA stole Japanese code secrets during the Washington Naval Treaty talks, which don't seem to have happened in this world. The Brits got their big breakthrough on the Enigma code via Polish intelligence; here Poland is actually part of Germany. Lastly, the CSA itself. In our world, the South of that time was well under the population of the rest of the USA. This is a difference which would have been magnified in Turtledove's universe, as immigration never ended (a Red scare was the big justification for ending open immigration). The industrialization difference even with an independent CSA, would still have been much greater than the population difference between the two countries. The American Empire saga comes to a close, with a new saga waiting in the wings. Where logic will reside in that new series remains to be seen, but you can count on intellectual stimulation.
Rating:
Summary: Jake Featherston Is Out Of Control
Review: The Victorious Opposition is the seventh book in this series. I don't understand why Turtledove has to describe each character's background every time they appear in the book, because most readers will probably have already read all of the previous books like I have.
Rating:
Summary: An improvement over the previous books
Review: This book brings us to 1941, and the start of the Second Great War. Two themes dominate this book--the consolidation of power in the South by the Freedom Party, and the preparation for war by each side (and also by the individual characters). This book is an improvement over the previous two inter-war books--perhaps because the material is more interesting, appalling as the Freedom Party's actions are, they make better reading than the Great Depression. Turtledove has the sense not to stick too close to the historical script. While the 1936 Olympics in Richmond parallel the ones in Berlin, there is no Jesse Owens analogue (um, incidently, until after WWII, the IOC awarded BOTH Olympics in a given year to the same country routinely. Where were the Winter Olympics held? Miami?). There is no Munich Pact as such, and most of the aggressive moves by the historical Germans are combined into an effort to regain the U.S.'s Great War territorial gains (and not even all of them). There is no Kristallnacht, but no shortage of violence by the Freedom Party on blacks. Some of our frustration at what seem to be Turtledove's annoying, invulnerable characters is relieved as more than one bite the dust, including one of the most irritating. Their roles as point-of-view characters are inherited by near relatives, alas. Turtledove gets his characters set for conflict--two of the new characters will be our "typical GI" and "typical sailor" types. We see that we will have a fighter pilot, an intelligence officer, and others giving us viewpoint in war--including a concentration camp head. The author's introduction of charactes from our own timeline as characters in this is often amusing ("Dutch" Reagan as commentator of a football game causes a character to think of him as a "great communicator"), sometimes obscure (Jerry Voorhis as US Ambassador to the CSA? Will we meet Nixon in the next book?), and sometimes annoying (a philandering Joe Kennedy). Since most of these were born 20-50+ years after the point at which Turtledove's timeline departs from our own, it could be wondered if Turtledove is not undermining his own logic. There are other quibbles (if the entire black sharecropper class is being thrown off the land by Featherston's tractors, that is far more people than the token homeless we see), but on balance an improvement on previous books. One hopes Turtledove will let the story go its own way in the upcoming books, rather than a slavish retelling of World War II, but that already seems a false hope (with an aircraft carrier for the US getting radar, we seem to be headed rapidly towards a Battle of Midway). A good effort, and hoping for even better.
Rating: 
Summary: i love this series but i'm running into problems
Review: this book series is great but i started reading it with how few remain about 3 years ago and i'm forgettign major events maybe turtledove can release a kind of timeline or something just to refresh readers minds a little. This book is great and i'm very happy Lucien is dead he gets on my nerves, now if only that chick in Alberta would die as well as Sam Carsten but i guess they serve a purpose
Rating:
Summary: Still a Worthwhile Series After Seven Books
Review: This book, Turtledove's seventh in this particular universe, is hardly the place to jump into this series. But, if you've read the whole series up to now, you'll want to stick with it. Yes, some of Turtledove's characteristic flaws are here, notably replaying events from our history in a different geopolitical context rather than inventing a whole new sequence of events. Thus, we get European history between the World Wars reset in a variant North America of the same time rather than postulating, say, no wars or of more limited extent. I suspect Turtledove wanted WWI and WWII taking place in North America and built his alternate timeline to justify that. Another flaw is frequent repetition, as if they were Homeric epithets, of characters' descriptions. And, in this book, he's taken to parenthetically highlighting the moral blindness of some of his characters as if we wouldn't notice otherwise. Yet, this series continues to hold my interest as the Confederate States of America stand-in for an aggreived Germany and Jake Featherston for Adolf Hitler. Watching several characters being co-opted into supporting the evil, "victorious opposition" of Featherston's regime is the main interest here. The moral corruption of several of the viewpoint characters as they are co-opted by Jake Featherston is disturbingly plausible. Others, far from the South, clash violently. Some die to be replaced in their viewpoint duties by family members. There are a couple of unnamed historical cameos, and a suicidal Ernie aka Ernest Hemingway shows up again. One story line seems a bit contrived just to get its character into trouble, and Lucien Galtier and his familial bantering still seem to have little function beyond showing us a man who has largely benefited from the Great War. But the plight of Scipio, a black man trapped in Featherston's CSA, doesn't seem at all contrived, and his story is the most frightening as his past, his race, and his country threaten his life and his family's As you would expect, the novel ends with the beginning of war and, no doubt, some unpleasant times ahead for all ... in the next book.
Rating:
Summary: American Empire: VIctorious Opposition
Review: This is long awaited book does not disappoint. Concluding the American Empire series started in Blood and Iron. Mr. Trutledove ends the lives of many main characters such as Sylvia Enos,Mrs.Moss, Nellie Semproches and others. However he does this in a fine fashion making they're deaths seem in the right place and replacing them with characters that compare but also differ. He also sets the stage for WWII and builds the suspense to the boiling point until in the last tantalizing paragraphs the second World War, the one that Turtledove has been marching towards during hte entire series explodes. I heartily recommend this book to anyone who has read the series and cannot wait for the next series, Return Engagement.
Rating:
Summary: Good, but with some flaws...
Review: This is one of the better books in the series, with a bit more action and movement of the characters (especially since some are dying off!). I agree with others that Turtledove has too much repetition in his narrative about each of the characters--he should read Herman Wouk's colossal "Winds of War" series; Wouk never felt that he had to repeat the habits of his characters or the events in their lives ad infinitum, he just went on with the story, trusting the readers to remember what they'd read. That said, I still love Turtledove's approach, since no one else is doing anything like it. "Victorious Opposition" is particularly thought-provoking now with its storyline about the obsession of those in "occupied" territories (Utah, Canada, Houston and Kentucky) to throw out the troops of the USA. I think the author has done that to remind us that occupation, no matter how well-intentioned and benevolent, is still occupation by those not like the occupied in culture or outlook. I also like Turtledove's use of the "Clarence Potter" character, one who violently disagreed with Featherstone, but who still supports the rise of the CSA and is willing to look the other way at some of his former opponent's actions, somewhat like the Wermacht's generals did with Hitler. It is a good read and has kept my interest over the last few days and I will be looking forward to the next installments. But Harry, please read Wouk for some pointers!
Rating:
Summary: Strongest of the American Empire trilogy
Review: This is the seventh book of a story sprawling across eight decades, already the most detailed alternate history ever penned. This volume was the most poignant of the series by far: readers know the general strokes of what will come, yet there are enough twists until the end to shake them up (the biggest being that we have to wait until August for the hammer to fall). Say goodbye to memorable characters and hello to a few new ones - Turtledove has skillfully taken us across generations as well as borders. My biggest complaint remains his one-sided presentation of black dialogue: Quebecois, Germans and Chinese all speak their lines in perfectly readable English, presumably without any accent and in sharp contrast to the literal speech patterns given to every black character. A few choice words like Flora's Yiddish would've sufficed, even for Scipio.
Rating:
Summary: And they go Marching on
Review: Well, where do I begin? Certainly not with 'How few Remain' no, were I to detail the series which I have forced myself through I would be here well into the darker hours of the evening. No, It suffices to say that Harry Turtledove has merely taken the histories of Germany and France and superimposed them on the Americas. The original books were really quite charming and the series has degraded since then. Victorious Opposition is the present pinnacle of degridation. To be certain, if you began reading the series you have brought yourself here therough the Great War and American Empire Series and if you've read the rest it is a foregone conclusion that you will take this book upon yourself. It isn't a bad book... it just... lacks any originality or dynamicism that it should have. It's good Alternate History I suppose, well, actually it isn't really, but it's ever so wearisome at this point. I wish that he would just stop writing this series, because I am shamefully addicted despite the fact that it just isn't any fun.
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