American Empire: Blood and Iron

Rating:
Summary: The U.S./German alliance has one WWI. Now what?
Review: This book continues the series that started with HOW FEW REMAIN, and continued with the GREAT WAR trilogy. In the series so far, the South won the First and Second Wars Between the States, thanks to the interference of France and Great Britain. This drove the North into the arms of Imperial Germany. Together, and helped by the Red Negro revolt in the South, they beat the British/French/Confederate side in the World War.

But nothing fails like success. The public is war weary and crying for reform, the conquered Canadians are restless, and the South is suffering the agonies of defeat. AMERICAN EMPIRE: BLOOD AND IRON traces the immediate aftermath of the war, as we see the Union tell itself there's nothing to worry about, and the Confederacy starts preparing for The Next War, and African Confederates caught between a rock and a hard place. What next? I can't wait to find out. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Huge dip in quality in this great series
Review: I have to qualify my non-recommendation here. If you are a fan of alternate history, you may like this book. Turtledove is the master of alternate history, and this entire series is a very interesting one. If you don't mind Turtledove's writing, then you may enjoy it as well. It can take great effort to get past his writing sometimes, but usually the plot makes up for it. This time, it doesn't, not unless you've already invested some time in the series. If this is your first Turtledove, stay away. It's not hard to understand what's going on without reading the previous books, but this book could very well turn you away from his books if you begin with it.

American Empire: Blood & Iron, is yet another chapter in the ongoing alternate history saga by Harry Turtledove. In this series, the Confederates won the Civil War, they faced off again with the United States in the 1880s, and they fought again during World War I. The United States was allied with Germany, while the Confederates were allied with Britain, France, and Canada.

Blood & Iron is the first book after the war, detailing what's happening in both countries in the post-war era. The Confederacy is going through a situation similar to what Germany went through in the real world: massive inflation, unemployment, great poverty, reparations payments. A Hitler-like figure, Jake Featherston, is gaining popularity with his anti-black and anti-government party. He speaks out about how the Confederacy was stabbed in the back by its politicians and that's how they lost the war. Meanwhile, in the North, the Socialist party has come to power, very much like post-war Britain. The North has suffered a bit of war-weariness, and that enabled the Socialists to take over.

This brings to mind the first of this books many missteps. Unlike the previous books in the series, this one is a little too much like what really happened. It's alternate history by numbers, and Turtledove is better than that. Replace black people with Jews and you all of a sudden have the real-world Germany. Replace United States with Britain and you've got what really happened as well. The subject matter of Jake's speeches is slightly different, but the parallel to the rise of Hitler is just too on the nose. There's too few differences. During the previous books, when he was detailing the war itself, this wasn't so much of a problem. The idea of a war on North American soil was so different, that Turtledove couldn't help but be unique. Unfortunately, he's falling away from that with this book. Perhaps where all of this leads will ultimately be different, but not when you take this book on its own.

The second problem is the characters. During the war, everybody was involved with the war effort in one way or another, so they were able to do interesting things, even if the character itself wasn't that interesting. Unfortunately, Turtledove doesn't have that luxury this time, and the characters suffer for it. Some of them are just completely useless, and their story isn't interesting enough to compensate. Nellie Semproch, to name one example, is just plain dull. During the war, she spied on the Confederates at her café in an occupied Washington DC. Now, she's newly married, still dealing with a headstrong daughter and her issues with men in general, but she's dull. Again, plot wins over character, and when the plot is unimportant, the character becomes lifeless. There are many other examples of this, too many to mention here.

There are also too many main characters. The book is written so that each character gets a chapter, so we end up seeing vignettes in their lives. There's no real flow, as the narrative jumps from one character to another. I've never seen a book where you can skip so much of it if you want to and not lose any of the main story. Occasionally, the main characters interact with each other, but not often. This vignette method of telling the story also makes the book very disjointed. The previous three books carried the story of the war from 1914 to 1917. This book alone goes from 1917 to 1924. It's almost like you're reading a bunch of short stories collected in a book, with some of the stories having the same characters.

Finally, Turtledove's writing is horrible in this book. I think that, in the past, it's been covered by the interesting ideas and plot. This time, though, it's very noticeable. He's constantly repeating himself, emphasizing things. Yes, Harry, we get that inflation is going up and up, so that $1 billion dollars will now buy you lunch, we get the fact that Nellie Semproch really dislikes men, etc. You don't need to introduce the characters every time we see them. Introducing them the first time we see them is good enough. Also, Turtledove can not write a sex scene to save his life. Please, Harry, please do the "fade to black" method.

Ultimately, this book is only for people who want to continue the series. Even then, I'd suggest you check it out from the library instead of buying it, unless you're a die-hard completist.

Rating:
Summary: Number four and still exciting
Review: Harry Turtledove's Great War trilogy was facinating and exciting. The newest instalment, American Empire:Blood and Iron was equaly exciting. Turtledove writes and develops the characters in a way that makes you love them. In this book Turtledove gives a history of post-war America. The Confederates seem to be a American Nazi Germany with Jake Featherston as the Confederaate "Hitler". The Freedom Party is a version of the Nazi party blaming everything on the blacks just as the Nazis blamed the Jews. I admit I was almost disapointed when the Freedom Party fell (although I know they will be back) because the thought of war started to ease. The one thing bad is Turtledove's description of sex, its graphic and almost embarrassing. I wish he could leave it out.

Rating:
Summary: There seems to be a general agreement among reviewers
Review: that while Turtledove writes a great story, you can ignore about fifty percent and still glean from it everything important. It's an interesting series. The plight of the Confederate States parallels that of Germany following WWI, including unjust reparations demanded by the U.S. (paralleling France and UK after WWI) and the immense inflation that resulted. Confederate states were printing and using one-billion dollar bills...German people were carting marks to the stores in wheelbarrows to buy a single loaf of bread. In our world, this permitted the rise of Hitler, while in Turtledove's it lets Sergeant Jake and his Freedom party emerge. The comparison between a charismatic Hitler (who was a corporal in WWI) and Jake, who was a sergeant in the WWI Confederate army, is not hard to see. Jake even spends time (as did Hitler) writing his memoirs (not called Mein Kampf, but the subject matter is probably very similar) following the temporary collapse of his party's influence. The unsuccessful Beer Hall Putsch is paralleled by the assassination of the Confederate president by a 'Freedom Party' member. The reaction of the southerners in Turtledove's book is more intense than the reaction of the German people was to the putsch as I recall. I don't think the German people had as fierce a dislike for the Nazi party as residents of the Confederate States show for the Freedom Party in Turtledove's story, but in both cases, party influence nearly vanished.

The election of a socialist government in the US is very like that of post WWI France and the complete unpreparedness of the military in both that country and Great Britain seems to have gripped Turtledove's US. Where he plans to take it from here is anyone's guess, but I suspect the Confederate states will elect Jake and his party will build up the military and attack the US, smashing through all opposition and taking the country by storm.

It should be interesting reading (about 30-50 percent of it anyhow). Considering the power of France, the UK, and Germany compared to the US after WWI, I find it hard to understand why Turtledove pays so little attention to what's going on over there. America's armed forces at the start of WWII have been compared to those of Sweden, and were certainly not the equal of any of the major European powers. Germany, France and the UK should play a huge role in anything that happened in the upcoming WWII of Turtledove's but he seems to be ignoring them.

I do wish Turtledove would stop weaving insignificant homily tales throughout his stories. They have very little bearing on the main issue and are nothing but a pain in the neck. About the only good thing I can say about them is that each of these specious tales is separated from its antecedent and descendent by large spaces so you can flip past each until you arrive at the one that seems to contain the main story thread without losing too much of the gist.

Were it not for this, I would give the book a much higher rating than I have. If I tore out all the unnecessary trash, the number of pages would probably decrease by more than half.

Rating:
Summary: A lot of Blood And Iron!
Review: When Blood And Iron arrived on my doorstep I have just put down Breakthroughs.

Continuing with the survivors of the Great War trilogy and their adjustments into post war life was, rather naturally, a come down from the high intensity of the Great War trilogy.

Jake Featherston's anger has dragged a few of the charcters who would otherwise never had met together. It also showed up the sheer self-centered selfishness of Anne Collerton, dragging brother with her.

Nellie Semproch going through motherhood again and hiding her dark secret from her husband was a good temperence for a woman who, like Anne Collerton and Silvia Enos, show the fortitude of women in this era.

The end of Ted Roosevelt and the rise of socialisim will have the enevidible result, if it is followed, the 1929 crash!

Roger Kimbell's comuppence wasn't all that surprising but Custer's survival was, when will he die!!

Lots more to write about. But I will only be spoiling the fun.

Generally a parallel of the 1920's, sometimes a little slow, I look foward to The Center Can Not Hold as we start to wind up towards the 1930s and beyond. I have pre-ordered, you shold too.

Rating:
Summary: Save Yo' Billion Dollah Confed'rate Bills, Boys...
Review: ...'cos the South gonna rise again.

Or maybe not.

At the end of the previous volume, it looked as if the North and Germany were going to make the same mistakes that the US and England/France made at the end of World War One, gleefully humiliating their defeated foe so flagrantly that Hitler years later took malicious pleasure in bringng out the railway carriage in which Germany had been forced to sign inequitable and punitive terms or surrender and using it as the site of his acceptance of French surrender.

Certainly, for some time after the end of the War, if the average citizen of the US thinks of the defeated Confederates, it's likely to be a brief hope that the bastards are suffering down there, but things never get quite so bad internationally.

Former Artillery Sergeant Jake Featherston, still working on "Over Open Sights", his memoir that explains the Souths loss in terms of betrayal of the True Spirit of the South by politicians and the military brass, becomes an early member of the Freedom Party. The Freedom Party, at the beginning a tiny splinter group, is an organisation possibly more scary to the early-21st-century reader than it is to the early-20th-century characters (though it certainly scares enough of them, to be sure). After all, our own history was shaped by a tiny splinter party that began its existence meeting in the backs of bars in Bavaria...

As in our universe, there is a horrible period of inflation/depression, with the printing presses unable to keep up with the demand, with postage stamps and paper money literally bearing amounts in the billions of dollars. Some may find this sort of hyper-inflation hard to believe, but, somewhere, i have actual real-world have multi-million-mark (and, i think, billion-mark) German ordinary postage stamps from the period between the Wars. But, as Turtledove shows us, even that sort of horrid times brings opportunities (even honest ones) for those who have open eyes and a quick grasp of a situation.

Up in the Republic of Quebec, Lucien Gaultier and his family --including his Yankee son-in-law, a doctor -- reap the beginnings of returning peace and prosperity, but another Canadian farmer resumes his bombing career in an attempt to exact more vengeance for the firing-squad death of his son, early in the US occupation.

George Armstrong Custer, his single solution to any military situation (charge headlong with everything you have) having paid off when using "barrels" (tanks) against infantry and cavalry, is a national hero. Which, with five billion Confederate dollars, will buy you a cup of coffee. Or perhaps not, if you have sufficient enemies in the War Department and the Executive Mansion. ((There is an old story, attributed to a number of famous wits -- the wit's friend remarks, of a mutual acquaintance "He is his own worst enemy", and the with replies "Not while I'm alive." Substitute "Custer" for "mutual aquaintance" and "Teddie Roosevelt" for "wit" and the syllogism still holds true.))

The aircraft carrier is the Latest Thing in naval warfare, and newer, lighter, quieter and harder-hitting, more maneuverable "barrels" are on the drawing boards... but what with the Socialists winning more and more power in Congress, and mounting a credible challenge to TR's try for a third term with Upton Sinclair as their candidate, and the inherent resistance to change in tactics or doctrine of the Military Establishment, money is just not available to the military to develop these promising weapons systems properly, much to the despair of forward-looking officers who see their need clearly.

With the Socialists in the majority and heading for the Executive Mansion, though, the treatment of the conquered Confederacy may just be a bit better than that of conquered Germany was, leading to unforseeable diversions from our own timeline even broader than we have seen so far.

I look forward to finding out.

Rating:
Summary: Okay for a transition
Review: Blood & Iron is a good transition book: now that the war is won, all of the characters are moving towards WWII, with a "Hitler" arising. I didn't enjoy it as much as some of the other books, but it moved along. The one thing that Turtledove really needs to do is lay off the sex.

The man cannot write a good sex scene. It's actually embarrassing.

Other than that, I'm looking forward to the next book.

Rating:
Summary: Errie Similrities
Review: There are many errie historical paralles in this book. I'm not going to give any of the book away but Turtledove has found a way to combine all the good aspects of his first four book in this series in this book. The way he has had the characters have returned to normalcy is amazing. Just will say one thing. The book spans 7 years and is a little shallow in some places. But for any lover of history, it is a great book.

Rating:
Summary: American Empire: Blood and Iron
Review: Another excellent book by Turtledove. I hope this will become another trilogy. The post-war lives were very interesting. I can't wait for the next book in the series. Keep'em coming Harry!

Rating:
Summary: Twentieth Century History as it might have been
Review: Harry Turtledove seems to have taken on a project to re-tell the whole of the history of the twentieth century as an alternate timeline. Blood and Iron is the first book of a new trilogy called American Empire. But it is also the fourth (or possibly fifth, depending on how you count them) book about the impact of the First World War on an American continent where the Confederate states won the civil war and America remained a country divided. The Great War novels paralleled the war in Europe with a similar war in America. The Confederate states were crushed and the series ended with the Northern states triumphant. Now, in Blood and Iron we follow the history of the Confederacy as it struggles to come to grips with its crushing defeat.

Turtledove makes many fascinating comparisons with the history of our own time line. Following the defeat of Germany in our First World War, the country degenerated into chaos. There was rampant inflation (a million marks would buy you a cup of ersatz coffee) and a young army corporal called Adolf Hitler joined a fledgling political party that blamed the Jews for all of Germany's troubles. By means of clever political machinations, he soon rose to a position of power in the Nazi party with consequences with which we are all familiar.

Well, in the alternate history of Blood and Iron, a disillusioned Confederate army sergeant called Jake Featherston joins the fledgling Freedom party. The downfall of the Confederate states was caused by the (...), everyone knows that. The Freedom party will put them in their place and make the country strong again. It is a simple, and very appealing message to a country that is collapsing in ruins, where everyone is a millionaire, but a million dollars barely buys breakfast in the morning.

The story follows the same episodic structure of the previous novels and we follow the same characters that we came to know and love in the previous books through their new lives in the post war world. That's why I consider the novel to be a continuation of the same series rather than the start of something new, for without the background knowledge of how those people fared in the recently concluded war, it would be very hard to come to grips with the current story and to properly understand their motives and their lives.

I found it utterly absorbing and as always I am eagerly awaiting the next book (and the many that I am sure will follow it). Turtledove has done a superb job. He brings history to life and his quirky, alternative presentation of a familiar tale is endlessly fascinating.