Rating: 
Summary: Needs a rewrite or two
Review: It looks like most of my review got deleted somehow, so I'll try again:"Into the Darkness" starts with an awesome idea, and there are some points where it almost delivers on its initial promise. The strengths that Turtledove is famous for, namely warfare and battle scenes, are clearly evident. However, we should expect better writing from an author of his caliber. This concept behind this novel is to have a major war that takes place in a fantasy world, where technology is at a low level, so magic is used in place of high tech weapons. This idea is intriguing, and Turtledove devotes a lot of attention to describing the available weapons and the ways that magic is used to control them. After reading "Into the Darkness", you'll know how to feed and train a dragon and how to find a ley line from which to draw magical powers. For those who enjoy that sort of this, Turtledove provides some fascinating explanations of battlefield tactics, and his actual scenes of warfare are almost always suspenseful. Unfortunately, the novel falters whenever it moves away from the war that constitutes its central plot device. Part of the problem is that Turtledove decides to tell the story from no fewer than sixteen points of view. To accomplish this, he divides the book into sections of about five pages, and skips abruptly from one POV to the next. Since each character in the novel receives a grand total of about thirty pages, it's difficult to care about any of them. If half as much time was devoted to characterization as to the endlessly repetitive descriptions of food and clothing, this could have been a much more memorable work. To make matters worse, the authors employs every imaginable stereotype, including the evil king, the spoiled rich girl, the corrupt policeman, the absent-minded professor, etc... All of the soldiers in the story (there are at least ten of them) have exactly the same personality, making it nearly impossible to tell them apart, and Turtledove does a remarkably poor job of showing the suffering undergone by servicemen in wartime. Then there's the quality of the writing itself; it has every mark of a novel that was rushed into publication without enough rewriting or editing. Turtledove makes tons of minor mistakes, such as writing "east" when he means to say "west", and there are ridiculous sentences such as, "Those boys can hide a six-course supper hiding under dead leaves." There are endless cliches ("He did not know how his wife was. Not knowing ate at him; it left an empty place where his heart should have been.") and annoying attempts to sound authentically old fashioned, such as placing the word "Aye" before every line of dialogue. The conversations rarely last more than a page, as if the author can't wait to wrap up this scene and move to the next one. The dialogue itself is often poorly written, since the characters never seem to do anything much besides talk about war and politics. Finally, there's no attempt to break from the novel's dreary tone with any humor, unless you count the hilariously inept attempts at sexual innuendo, of which there are far too many. Lines such as, "And after supper, would you like to get you own eel stewed? I have a room upstairs." are thrown in on almost every page, apparently for the exclusive purpose of appealing to horny adolescent boys. In the end, I only awarded this book three stars by a very narrow margin. Turtledove didn't put enough time and effort into it to make it truly worth reading, unless you're bored and have nothing better to do. If you'd like to read a much better blending of high fantasy and war story, I recommend George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice."
Rating:
Summary: Needs a rewrite or two
Review: "Into the Darkness" starts with an awesome idea, and there are some points where it almost delivers on its initial promise. The strengths that Turtledove is famous for, namely warfare and battle scenes, are clearly evident. However, we should expect better writing from an author of his caliber. .... In the end, I only awarded this book three stars by a very narrow margin. Turtledove didn't put enough time and effort into it to make it truly worth reading, unless you're bored and have nothing better to do. If you'd like to read a much better blending of high fantasy and war story, I recommend George R. R. Martin's "A Song of Fire and Ice."
Rating: 
Summary: interesting but confusing
Review: with so many characters and countries it is difficult to keep track of what is going on throughout the book. it seems that the story is told by basically going down the list of characters (at the front of the book) in the same order over and over again telling brief portions of events. since there are so many characters.. by the time you get back to see what is going on with one specific person.. you cant remember who they are and what they are doing. other than the confusion, the plot and imaginary world he creates is interesting. i just wish he cut down on number of characters to develope a few allowing you to become interested in them instead of so many that you dont learn or care much about.
Rating: 
Summary: Highly recommended
Review: Into The Darkness is the first book of a great series that I have enjoyed immensely. I have bought each book in the series the moment it has come out and I have enjoyed all of them, finishing them in a couple of days. Into the Darkness is World War II in a fantasy world. The countries represented in the story are the equivalent of the countries in our world during the World War. It might seem that since World War II has already been played out, you would know the final outcome and the book would therefore be boring with no surprises. Knowing the final outcomes is just a small part of the story however, and you will soon put aside the thought as you [get]into the story. The individual stories of the many characters in the story are what keeps you reading. The character are memorable and you soon begin to to choose your favorites. All their stories are different with characters ranging from a lowly soldier to the high general of Unkerlant(Russia) to a scientist working on a highly secret project(the atom bomb). Their stories all tie in and they tell of the ordeals and tribulations that people have to go through in a World War. The other reviews have been a bit negative and this book has been rated as only "average." I highly disagree with those people who rated this book only three stars. If there were more stars I could rate this, I would. I cannot recommend this book highly enough and this book leads into an incredible series that will have you captivated. After I finished one book in the series, I scoured the internet every couple of weeks searching if the next book had come out.
Rating:
Summary: Nice idea but poor execution.
Review: I'd been wanting to read this book for a long time so when I saw it sitting in the library while I was waiting for my daughter I grabbed it. The basic premise is cool. WWII fought with dragons instead of airplanes, sea monsters in stead of submarines, etc. But the end result just wasn't very interesting. Harry Turtledove is known for writing alternate history and that is pretty much how this reads, like a history book. He seems far more interested in the events than the characters or their stories. And I realize that he is trying to cover a lot of ground but any time a book has a cast of characters listed in front and it is longer than three pages that means trouble. Between the huge number of characters and the fact than none of them were all that interesting it took me more than half the book before I could figure out who belonged to what side. For me the bottom line is that this book just wasn't that interesting. I finished it but I won't be reading the second in the series.
Rating:
Summary: What a Bore!
Review: While I have long been a fan of Harry Turtledove's alternate history, I find this newest series (of which this is the first book) to be a big disappointment. When Turtledove works within the known historical quantity of our own world and its major conflicts, his ability to provide twists and spins on what happened and allow major historical personages to interact with his characters makes for a fascinating read. In this case, he does none of that. In _Into the Darkness_, we are presented with a fantasy world where magic "works", and onto this world is projected (as a rather dully restrictive template), the basic framework of our World War II, with all of its innovations, people who parallel actual historical figures, array of combatant nations, blunders, and atrocities. The problem with this is that this world is too much like our own. The magical technology mirrors with excruciating exactitude mid-twentieth century innovations (such as stasis boxes for refrigeration; ley line caravans for rail and motor transport, energy sticks for rifles and artillery, and oh those awful "eggs" for shells and bombs). We of course also have our Stalinist Unkerlanters, our Nazi/Fascist amalgam Algarvians, and the poor hated Kaunians as victims of a potential Holocaust. All these similarities make for what is, in my opinion, a poor pastiche of a complex time in our history, and even moreso a pastiche of some of his own better written novels. If Turtledove had instead spent more time creating a unique magical world and system, rather then having the magical version of panzers and Stuka Dive Bombers, and also created original crises and political realities that did not simply seek to parrot our history (leaving the reader to of course wink broadly and exclaim..."so Forthweg is Poland, etc."), it could have been a masterful work. Few fantasy novelists deal with the impact magic has on mass warfare...the idea of a magical armageddon for instance...and wouldn't a society with thousands of years of magical training come up with a more ingenious way of dealing death than casting energy bolts from a stick. There is a lot of uncharted territory here, but this series fails to map any of it out, instead simply seeking to create a Bizarro World image of our own tragic history. If you are a fantasy buff, this one is not going to satisfy, and there are lots of other alternate histories out there that work a lot better than this one, including several written by the author of this big disappointment.
Rating:
Summary: Good writing but is missing a purpose.
Review: This is the first Harry Turtledove book that I managed to finish. Once I got into the flow of the story the book reads very well. Turtledove shows remarkable ability to write a complex story without losing the reader. The book follows the exploits of about 15 to 20 (I lost count at about seven) mostly unconnected characters during the beginning of a fatasy war based on WWII. The book spends the first hundred pages or so introducing characters, and then it turns up the pace, this story may many things but it is never dull. The glaring problem with this very entertaining book is that it is missing a purpose for its existance. The book doesn't have anything important or insightfull to say about WWII or its characters for that manner. What is the point of writing an alternate history novel if not to try to put at least some insight into the history. As it is the book just plagerises from history books to create a storyline for the author to sell. I'm sure there is a much better story to be told by a book such as this one, but this one isn't it.
Rating:
Summary: Good read
Review: This is a very good book. When I first picked it up I had no idea that it was a parallel to WWII. However, finding out that it was made me more curious to learn about WWII. Even if you are not a WWII buff you will still enjoy this book. It's plot is well written and the multiple characters are woven in well too. The many characters might be hard to keep straight at first but read on for you are in for a good experiance, and the characters will all make sense eventually.
Rating:
Summary: Into the Darkness
Review: Into the Darkness was a very good book. I have stayed up really late at night to keep on reading. I have read the book twice and enjoyed it both times. The book takes place in an old wizardly kind of world. There is a lot of magic in the book other than mages. People are shunned because of of the color of there hair and what they wear. People are captured, but they still fight on to overthrow the empire. Kings, soldiers, mages, and petty farmers come together in a book of exciting adventure.
Rating:
Summary: The Story worked, but it is still a bit shallow.
Review: Harry Turtledove wrote this story well for the kind of story that I believe he was trying to produce: a war story seen through different unique perspectives comparable to a novel of the like on a real war. Staying true to its format, however, it failed in certain areas and the point of the novel (the format I just described) is very subtle and would trough off audiences.
The characters are portrayed as they are to give you the feeling that you are jumping into their lives like a movie or documentary would, allowing us to see what they are feeling during this part of THE WORLD AT WAR that we have put aside for them. Unfortunately, this is not a real war, so readers want character background and a sense of fraternity or sorority with these characters, which cannot be provided with the format of the novel being what it is. Also, the names are a bit complicated and hard to remember as well as the places; World War II stories could get away with just naming places and could take it for granted that the reader would know where it is and what it would look like, BUT A FANTASY NOVEL MAY NOT. The map in the inside cover of the book doesn't help unless you Xerox it, as is the same for the list of character names.
The weaponry is, for obvious reasons, not described: if this were a novel about a real war (which, I stress again, it should be comparable to), they wouldn't describe an AK-47. Tom Clancy was one novelist whose work I have read who actually took time (sometimes) to familiarize us with what he is talking about, but other authors don't. Copying their style, Turtledove doesn't describe to us what a dragon egg is like Clancy wouldn't bore us with a description of a grenade. In fact, the entire fantastic environment is lacking in certain details DELIBERATELY LEFT TO OUR IMAGINATION because such details would bore us if the author were describing Nashville in such a way. Thus, he leaves out elements of "ZUWAYZA"; I believe that nation is called.
Unfortunately for Turtledove's readers, this is not a "HOBBIT" type of book, but more like a fact-meets-fiction novel taking place in WWII. Since this is part of the fantasy genre, the readers may find this first novel of the series lacking in the descriptive magic that made "THE HOBBIT" famous.
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