Rating: 
Summary: More Of The Same.
Review: If you read the book before this one, or any of the preceding series, you will know what to expect in this book and probably won't be disappointed. The strength of the series remains in the character development and global scope. There is also the occasional surprise to see how this alternate history differs from real history.However, it soon becomes apparent that the characters are having the same conversations every time they meet...and those conversations are almost exactly like what they discussed in the previous book. The plot moves slowly and the overall story line is really only advanced in the last 150 pages. While I remain interested in seeing how this series turns out, I don't feel like reading the same thing in every book. Here's hoping Turtledove straightens things out in book 3.
Rating: 
Summary: A Disappointment
Review: Harry Turtledove is spitting out books at the rate of five or six a year. And they aren't short, either --- he seems to have a contractual minimum of 600 pages per novel. Anyone pumping out fiction at this pace can be expected to run hot or cold, and Turtledove is no exception. The original World War quartet (this one is the second in a "sequel" trilogy) was fresh and consistently exciting. Unfortunately, this follow up spends too much time rehashing the plot of the original and padding the pages with endlessly repetitive prose. Turtledove, at his best, is one heckuva skilled storyteller, but he's never an elegant writer. In this book he is just plain sloppy and long-winded. He never lets an opportunity go by to belabor the obvious: i.e., "He didn't like it. Not even a little bit he didn't." and "He thought he saw movement. But then again, maybe he didn't, too." If the plot was lively enough it might be possible to ignore this turgid, clotted prose, but since the story moves at a glacial pace, and the characters are cardboard cutouts, it gets pretty wearying. Even though this one ends on a cliffhanger, I've let six months go by and haven't looked at volume 3. I just can't face any more sentences like "After what seemed like forever --- but really wasn't...." I'd recommend the World War series, or the books beginning with "How Few Remain" and the "Great War" novels. But this one... well, let's put it this way: Harry needs to hire an editor. Someone who can pull out the weeds and dig the rocks out of the ground and do some verbal landscaping. A sleeker, shorter novel without endless repetition would do much better. Hey, Harry it's OK to write a 200 page book!
Rating: 
Summary: Finally, some action!!
Review: Fans of the World War series will not be let down. Many of your favorite characters are back, some changed by the years, some not. This book is a big improvement in that there is some actual action. :-) My only negative criticism is that unlike the books of the World War series, there is no definite ending. Going from the last chapter of the first book into the second, and from the second to the third is much like just going on to the next chapter in the same book. So plan on having a copy of the next one handy when you are finishing up. Bad luck for us that have finished the 3rd book and are waiting for the next chapter. This 2nd book in the series is a little more final than the other 2. The 3rd book can leave you feeling a little unsatisfied, but, as always, the characterizations are great and the story is very believable.
Rating:
Summary: Liked it
Review: I'm probably in the minority when I say this, but I actually like Harry Turtledove's Colonization series better than its predecessor, the Worldwar series. A lot of people have commented that this series has a lot less action. That actually appeals to me, since I skimmed through most of the extensive battle sequences when I read the Worldwar books. Sorry, but German panzer maneuvers just don't do it for me. I like the whole Lizard saga because of the characters, and I think the most fascinating characters of all are the Lizards themselves. Turtledove has accomplished something very difficult by making them completely different from humans but still allowing us to sympathize with them. One example that comes to mind is Ttomalss, an alien psychologist who steals a human baby girl, takes her back to his spaceship, and raises her by teaching her his own alien values and never allowing her to see other human beings. He thinks of her as a laboratory animal. He constantly refers to her as an experiment. But when Kassquit (that's what the warped human girl's name is) hits puberty and starts pursuing a relationship with a human being, Ttomalss is as concerned and hurt as any human father would be. It's that kind of weird detail that keeps me coming back to this series.
Rating:
Summary: entertaining enough, still room to improve
Review: Probably the most interesting thing about Turtledove's alternate histories is the twists he comes up with as events develop. He still runs too many subplots for most of them to have much depth, but he does pull such a multitude of them off well considering that there are too many. A good example: the events in China in the book could have been tremendously important, involving some of the series' oldest characters. In this book it is a dull backwater. Mr. Usher's comments below are so cogent I won't try to reiterate them in my own words, but simply associate myself with them. In spite of its flaws, I enjoyed _Down to Earth_ more than I had expected to from the reviews I read, and this was because Turtledove is an interesting storyteller who always surprises, isn't afraid to kill off a key character, and whose writing style is always easy reading. Recommended to fans of the series; if this is your first look at it, best to start at the beginning with the _Balance_ subseries, which leads into the _Colonization_ subseries of which _Down to Earth_ is a part.
Rating:
Summary: From WorldWar to WorldBore.
Review: The series gets very talky and devoid of action. The pluck and ingenuity employed by the humans in the WorldWar series has given way to ex-tough guy Sam Yeager wringing his hands and whining about the planet's would-be subjugators: "Lizards are people toooo!" Turtledove didn't seem to want to bother with writing out interesting battle scenes this time around, and he lazily skims over the big fight between the Third Reich and the Lizards. His tantalizing introduction of Ayatollah Khomeini in the last book continues to be a dud; apparently his role is little more than a walk-on. Shouldn't characters (JFK and Khrushchev) pictured on the cover of the book actually be mentioned somewhere in the text?
Rating: 
Summary: A Worthy Addition to the Series
Review: Turtledove does an excellent job of portraying the ego and politics of Nazi Germany in this second volume of Colonization. Himmler is now the Fuhrer bent on retaking Poland from the Race of Lizards. His plan involves allying Germany with the USSR in this military action. The Soviet Union, under the leadership of Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich declines to involve itself in this conflict, seeing the endeavor as futile. Himmler dies, leaving Germany without a leader and in turmoil. While the interim "Committee of Eight" rules Germany and fights over who is going to be the next Fuhrer, the Race wages a propaganda war in an attempt to convert humanity to the worship of their past emperors. This campaign meets with success in China where ancestor worship is common, but is opposed aggressively in Muslim nations. As the Race ponders the enigma of human responses to it's policies, Sam Yeager begins raising his lizard hatchlings as if they were human children. Mickey and Donald show rapid intellectual growth and actually begin speaking ahead of normal advancement for their species. This is in contrast to the now grown Kassquit, a human female who has been raised by Ttomalss, the Race's expert on human psychology. The restricted environment of the Race stifled her development, and the experiment that was meant to bridge the Race and humanity is already showing failure as she enters puberty and begins to explore her individuality in the light of human sexuality. The Committee of Eight succeeds in appointing the notorious Dr. Ernst Kaltenbrunner as the next Fuhrer of Germany. Kaltenbrunner proceeds with Himmler's insane plan to retake Poland, which has devastating effects on the geography and political future of Germany as an independent "not-empire". Built on the solid foundation laid in the World at War series and the previous Colonization volume, Down to Earth is a rich and interesting read. The deeper I got into Turtledove's world, the more difficult it was to put the book down. As with his earlier books, I often had to look into the historical significance of characters involved in the story. This made the book more then entertaining, but also educational. If you haven't read Turtledove's World at War series, what are you waiting for? It's a wonderful meld of alternative history and science fiction. If you have read the proceeding series, then you won't be disappointed with the addition of "Down to Earth".
Rating:
Summary: The humans are catching up...or are they?
Review: Turtledove again puts us in the 60's in a world filled with lizards. Some have suggested not htat much happens here but sometimes suspense makes up for it. The descriptions of the space race are excellent. You might guess as to which ship fired the missles from the previous volume in this one. (I'll give a hint, there's a direct quote from one of the characters that makes it obvious) The only sad thing about the books (I've asked Turtledove this several times). Is that there's no movies or games planed for the series.An RPG would seriously rock on any platform. I still wonder however if this series will now go into the 1980's or after that the 2000's perhaps with a liberation of the lizard planets.
Rating:
Summary: MASTER OF THE GENRE
Review: As an author and novelist myself I rarely have time (regretably)to read other people's works, let alone write reviews. I do not personally know Harry Turtledove, nor do I owe him anything but my heartfelt appreciation for giving us superb, first-rate, entertaining escapism. I was introduced to his work when I read his Civil War alternate history,"Guns of the South" to pass the time on a long plane ride. I was hooked. When I discovered this talented writer had an alternate history series about World War II, I couldn't resist. I've written four nonfiction books on World War II and two novels dealing with the war, and I am impressed (and jealously entertained) by Turtledove's talented and knowledgeable work in this area. He has an agile, organized mind that spins out wonderfully told tales in impressive historical detail. Turtledove has raised the bar for intelligent alternate history escapism to a level few others ever have. This guy is one of the truly great story tellers on our lifetime and has that unique gift of making the reader ache for more as each novel comes to a conclusion. To fully appreciate any of his 3 books in the Colonization series, readers are strongly urged to begin this joyful journey with the first of the 4 books in the original World War II series (In The Balance). All of the books in these two back-to-back series are really one, continuing story. Unfortunately, with Colonization: Aftershocks, this epic body of work comes to an end. Harry, if you read this, please find a way to add another wonderful book. Maybe take a page from George Lucas and give us a tale to cover the missing years between the WorldWar series and the Colonization books.
Rating:
Summary: I guess you have to read it
Review: If you love the universe created by Harry Turtledove in this series and you have gotten this far, you have to read this book. However, it's not a great book. The action is VERY slow. Some characters do almost nothing, and nothing really exciting develops until about three fourths of the way through the book. Because of that, I finally paid attention to Turtledove's prose, which I discovered I did not much like. I sort of knew that before, but filling so many pages with nothing happening really brought his repetitive phrasing to the fore. It was not the most annoying thing I had ever run across, but it would do until a more annoying example came along. (Those familiar with his writing know what I'm talking about.) And quit telling me that so-and-so's wife is loyal or that the lizards keep their ships warm because it was more like their planet, or that Mrs. Yeager is a stickler for grammar. Reminders of this in the first 100 pages or so is forgiveable to get us caught up if we haven't read the series in a while, but we've all been reading the series for some time now. If you want to mention the heat on the ship, fine, but don't remind us that the Lizard's home planet is really warm on page 400 just to fill a word quota. (The grammar nit picking by Mrs. Yeager is a particularly boring detail that I wish he would drop altogether - it's usually not even her doing it, just asides saying that she would object to something had she heard it. Who cares?) I absolutely love the universe Turtledove has created with this series and I feel compelled to discover how the world develops and the series progresses. Unfortunately, the journey to that discovery has become less and less enjoyable as the series progresses. I'm not sure that I'll finish.
| 
