Rating: 
Summary: A well-written but unbelievable novel
Review: It's hard to criticize a writer who can put a sentence together like Stirling (he gets even better in his later books), but Marching Through Georgia has several fundamental flaws. I'm more concerned with the unbelievable military equipment of the Draka than with the larger question of whether a highly militarized society based on "oligarchical feudalism" could actually exist and prosper. Given how he treats military technology, Stirling reminds me of a kid who learns the cheat codes for a video game, so that his characters are exponentially smarter and stronger than their opponents. At the beginning of Marching through Georgia, the Draka dispatch a paratrooper force to hold a strategic pass in southwestern Russia. They aim to bottle up a Nazi army and smash it. Unfortunately for anyone interested in suspense or drama, the Germans are no match for the Draka. The Nazis can muster 4,000 tanks, all of which seem to be roughly equivalent to the types they actually fielded in "our" WW2. The Draka have 14,000 Hond IIIs, which are very similar to the M1A1s now deployed by the US Army. The Draka have full automatic assault rifles for every soldier, automatic mortars, an RPG-type antitank rocket, reliable personal radios, Claymore-style mines...you get the idea. Their Air Force is unstoppable. Basically, Stirling creates a scenario in which one side gets all the best toys. One company of Draka paratroopers holds out against a regiment of the Nazi's best mechanized troops. Sure, the Draka have a nice defensive position, but the Germans (who were among the most flexible/adaptable soldiers of the real WW2) simply stumble around like extras in Star Trek, waiting to get hit.I have several other minor bones to pick with this book. 1. The paratroopers constantly worry about running out of supplies, but logistics never really comes into play. Perhaps the Draka's near-mastery of the air allows them to drop supplies by parachute, but Stirling never mentions it. It's almost as if he's interjecting the question of supplies in order to balance the superhuman military abilities of the Draka, but he doesn't follow through. 2. A flamboyant mechanized cavalry commander makes a brief appearance and then vanishes, leading you to wonder what was the purpose of those ten or so pages. He adds nothing to the story besides distraction. 3. The Nazis have one regiment involved in trying to retake the strategic pass so their comrades can escape the Draka fire sack. Now, if I had a German Army Group (several divisions) trapped like that, I wouldn't wait on a single regiment to do the necessary work. I'd send everything I could up that road and let them pound on the paratroops. Given the Drakan technical and skill advantage, you could get a division chewed up that way, but you'd save a huge portion of your Army. Instead, the main German Army group just sits and takes it. Maybe Hitler gave them the Stalingrad order -- Hold at all costs. Again, there's no explanation for why such a powerful force relies on a relatively small unit to liberate them. All that being said, Stirling is still a compelling writer (as a wordsmith, he leaves Harry Turtledove in the dust) who forces his readers to deal with some heavy-duty ideas. The admiration that many readers have for the Draka seems to stem from their military/technical superiority, though, and Stirling doesn't make this advantage believable. They're just too good -- too smart -- too tough -- and least believable of all, too well equipped -- for it to be truly satisfying.
Rating: 
Summary: The Master Race Meets the Master Class
Review: Marching Through Georgia is the first novel in the Draka series. In another timeline, the losers from wars in America and Europe, philosophers without followers, and other misfits migrated to the Draka Crown Colony in South Africa. Over decades the colony took over the entirety of sub-Sahara Africa and then the Balkans, becaming the sovereign Domination of Draka in 1919. During World War II, the Domination entered the war with an airdrop onto Sicily in 1941. Six months later, the Germans had taken Moscow and the Wehrmacht in south Georgia are threatening the Draka conquests in Armenia. The Draka are assembling armored legions in Armenia to attack through the Caucasus Mountains and drop two legions of airborne at night to clear the passes of the Ossetian Military Highway. Opposing them is a panzer regiment of the Waffen-SS, Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler. In this novel, the von Shrakenberg family are descendents of a Hessian mercenary paid off with land in southern Africa after the British lost their war against the American rebels. Karl is an Arch-Strategos, a general of the Supreme General Staff. His son Eric is Centurion of Century A, 1st Airborne Legion. His daughter Johanna is a Pilot Officer flying Eagle interceptors. Karl is back in Castle Tarleton overlooking Archona, the capital of Draka. He is worried about Eric leading his century in the Caucasus Mountains and Johanna flying an Eagle out of Kars. He knows the North Caucasus campaign is risky, but necessary for the Domination to grow. Century A has an American reporter, Bill Dreiser, with them as they drop into the mountains. It is his first airdrop and he is understandably nervous. As he leaps from the plane and falls, he grasps the release toggle and gives a single firm jerk. This novel shows the personal lives of the van Shrakenberg family after the Sicily campaign in their plantation Oakenwald, intermingled with the assault on Village One along the Ossetian Military Highway. It describes the history of the Domination and the people who become the Draka. It also tells something of their serfs and their enemies. The assault on Village One is depicted in great detail, from the first sentry taken out by the advancing Draka to the final confrontation and the subsequent relief by the Janissaries. It is a tale of a trained, experienced and well-led combat unit with excellent morale and determination. Unfortunately, they happen to be slave-holding imperialists. This story is plausible and frightening in concept. What if the British had encouraged loyalists from the former American colonies to settle in South Africa? What if those settlers had been imperialistic and had expanded into Rhodesia a century before Cecil Rhodes? What if they continued their expansion to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa and then to the Ottomon Empire? Would the resulting state have a social structure combining the worst features of the Confederacy and the Afrikaners, but with a government more militarized and efficient than the Spartans or Prussians? Welcome to the Domination. ...The slave trade itself was banned in 1834 and this ban was enforced by British warships. However, the British hold in Africa was very lose prior to the 1880's and the taking of slaves within the African continent was not ended until 1891. Even after the Boer War, a form of non-chattel slavery remained in the practice of apartheid. Highly recommended for Stirling fans and for anyone else who enjoys alternate history depicting ground combat in the worst of all possible worlds.
Rating:
Summary: The Master Race Meets the Master Class
Review: Marching Through Georgia is the first novel in the Draka series. In another timeline, the losers from wars in America and Europe, philosophers without followers, and other misfits migrated to the Draka Crown Colony in South Africa. Over decades the colony took over the entirety of sub-Sahara Africa and then the Balkans, becaming the sovereign Domination of Draka in 1919. During World War II, the Domination entered the war with an airdrop onto Sicily in 1941. Six months later, the Germans had taken Moscow and the Wehrmacht in south Georgia are threatening the Draka conquests in Armenia. The Draka are assembling armored legions in Armenia to attack through the Caucasus Mountains and drop two legions of airborne at night to clear the passes of the Ossetian Military Highway. Opposing them is a panzer regiment of the Waffen-SS, Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler. In this novel, the von Shrakenberg family are descendents of a Hessian mercenary paid off with land in southern Africa after the British lost their war against the American rebels. Karl is an Arch-Strategos, a general of the Supreme General Staff. His son Eric is Centurion of Century A, 1st Airborne Legion. His daughter Johanna is a Pilot Officer flying Eagle interceptors. Karl is back in Castle Tarleton overlooking Archona, the capital of Draka. He is worried about Eric leading his century in the Caucasus Mountains and Johanna flying an Eagle out of Kars. He knows the North Caucasus campaign is risky, but necessary for the Domination to grow. Century A has an American reporter, Bill Dreiser, with them as they drop into the mountains. It is his first airdrop and he is understandably nervous. As he leaps from the plane and falls, he grasps the release toggle and gives a single firm jerk. This novel shows the personal lives of the van Shrakenberg family after the Sicily campaign in their plantation Oakenwald, intermingled with the assault on Village One along the Ossetian Military Highway. It describes the history of the Domination and the people who become the Draka. It also tells something of their serfs and their enemies. The assault on Village One is depicted in great detail, from the first sentry taken out by the advancing Draka to the final confrontation and the subsequent relief by the Janissaries. It is a tale of a trained, experienced and well-led combat unit with excellent morale and determination. Unfortunately, they happen to be slave-holding imperialists. This story is plausible and frightening in concept. What if the British had encouraged loyalists from the former American colonies to settle in South Africa? What if those settlers had been imperialistic and had expanded into Rhodesia a century before Cecil Rhodes? What if they continued their expansion to the rest of sub-Saharan Africa and then to the Ottomon Empire? Would the resulting state have a social structure combining the worst features of the Confederacy and the Afrikaners, but with a government more militarized and efficient than the Spartans or Prussians? Welcome to the Domination. ...The slave trade itself was banned in 1834 and this ban was enforced by British warships. However, the British hold in Africa was very lose prior to the 1880's and the taking of slaves within the African continent was not ended until 1891. Even after the Boer War, a form of non-chattel slavery remained in the practice of apartheid. Highly recommended for Stirling fans and for anyone else who enjoys alternate history depicting ground combat in the worst of all possible worlds.
Rating:
Summary: Unreadable, but not in a BAD way...
Review: S. M. Stirling, Marching Through Georgia (Baen, 1988) I'm not going to call marching Through Georgia a bad novel. I got a lot farther through it than the usual fifty-page rule. My only real problem with it was, quite simply, it didn't hold my interest. This could very well be because I have trouble slogging through war novels of most stripes (Harry Turtledove's Guns of the South had much the same effect on me, despite its classic status). The book was originally recommended to me for its depictions of the society of the Draka, but I found it so difficult to get through I simply couldn't appreciate them. So I'm not saying it's bad, I just couldn't get though it. You may have a different experience. Gets the gentleman's C.
Rating: 
Summary: Alternate History shouldn't be a veneer
Review: This book is at it's most basic a poor war story in which theDraka(Spartan-Confederate-Nazis desendend from Loyalists from theRevolutionary war)attack the Soviet Union in Georgia during the Soviet attack on the Nazis(Odd, but even after almost 200 years since the Point of Divergence from our history, the two are almost identical). The stays with the perspective of a Draka solider with an American journalist fighting in a mountain town against Nazis with 1990s tech against Germans with 1940s tech. Periodically, exerts from Anna von Shrakenburg's(the solider's illegitamate child with a slave/"serf" who lives in America aided by the Friends society) book about her life there, which comes to nothing...
Rating: 
Summary: Modest, but the beginning...
Review: Well, for all intents and purposes, this novel was the most modest and simple, as far as explaning how the Draka are. However, most of it was about soldiers in battle; it could have been describing any other battle in any war in human history, just the names and technology change. When in war, we normally don't care for the other side's way of life. Within the entire series, although simple, it's worth reading again.
Rating:
Summary: Modest, but the beginning...
Review: Well, for all intents and purposes, this novel was the most modest and simple, as far as explaning how the Draka are. However, most of it was about soldiers in battle; it could have been describing any other battle in any war in human history, just the names and technology change. When in war, we normally don't care for the other side's way of life. Within the entire series, although simple, it's worth reading again.
| 
