Rating: 
Summary: The Prelude to War
Review: Overall, this is an excellent book. Like Mr. Turtledove's other works, it has more than one character. In fact it has more like 16 characters spaced arond North America, from a Sonoran farmer to a patriotic Canadian in Manitoba to a fat US general.In pervious books, Harry Turtledove has created a world where the South won the Civil War (War of Secssion in these books), and the USA loses another war in the 1880s (Second Mexican War). Finally the Great War comes and the US and her ally Germany wins agaisnt the CSA, Britain, France, Russia and Japan. The US is finally on top, and the Southerners get a taste of defeat. They don't like it much, and the "Freedom Party" is created. The South then takes a turn for worse: inflation, depression etc. It parallels Nazi Germany where the Hitler figure here is a man named Jake Featherston who heads the Freedom Party. In 1933 he wins the election and the last book ends at his inauguration in 1934. We start up here in The Victorious Opposition shortly after that. This book goes on into the early 1940s and ends with war beginning. Turtledove does an excellent job of showing the advancements of that time, such as radios and refridgerators. The Socialist led USA ignores the extremely conservative CSA which is actually doing well being led by Featherston. Planes labeled "Confederate Citrus Comany" fly about, but why would they need machine guns on farming planes? Dams are built on rivers to stabalize the flooding and giving the people work during the Depression. In this book the Confederate States are so much like Nazi Germany: anti-black riots, the building of camps, rearming quietly, and something that angered me, the returning of Kentucky and Houston back to the CSA. Even the 1936 Olympics is held in Richmond and it is the scene of something big for some characters. Speaking of characters, we see the passing of three of them and the coming of three more. Everyone is getting older, more children are born, while more die. We await the next installment dealing with World War Two....
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: 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: One Part of a Strong Whole
Review: When reading Turtledove's alternate history series of the Great War and years thereafter, I sometimes wonder why I put up with wooden, sometimes annoying characters and shallow sub-plots in order to have my curiosity satisfied about what happens next in his world. It reminds me of a soap opera in which the audience is always left hanging with an excruciating path to any sense of resolution. With the Victorious Opposition I now understand the appeal of this series. Although few of these books stand up by themselves, the sum of the books is a great story that is hard to put down. What seemed shallow becomes substantial. In fact, "The Sum is Stronger than the Parts" could be the title of one of the installments. Victorious Opposition was the best of the post Great War series as it portrays a reticent U.S. unwilling to deal with an ascendant Confederacy led by an America style Fuehrer bent on revenge against those whom he believes stifled him, both inside and outside his own country. Such a close similarity to "you know who" and his henchman may be a cheap trick and a "paint by numbers" construction, but Turtledove pulled if off neatly. The book ended with quite a bang and promises of much more to come as it transitioned to a rematch between the U.S. and Confederacy. I also enjoyed the cameo appearances by people such as Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown (no baseball hall of fame in this universe), New Mexico Congressman Barry Goldwater, and sportscaster Dutch Reagan. A couple of things I wish Turtledove would include are campaign maps and greater detail of what happens outside North America. Nevertheless, I am so eager to read the next installment that I purchased it in hardcover rather than waiting for the paperback.
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