Rating: 
Summary: I am so happy...
Review: ...that I didn't buy this book (I borrowed it from the library).Other reviewers have mentioned how bad this book is, and that it should have been marked as a "young adult" book.
If i were a young adult, I would feel pretty insulted: good juveniles are very different than this preachy, badly written, boring, pseudo-politically correct piece of utter brainless trash.
Turtledove dedicates this book to Robert Heinlein, Andre Norton and H. Beam Piper.
He would have done much better to actually read them: Piper, for one, wrote much, much better alternate history than this stuff, and as for Heinlein, his juveniles never talked down to his readers like Turtledove does.
Don't buy this book: borrow it from a library, if you have to.
Rating:
Summary: A Waste of Time (Either Crosstime or Otherwise!)
Review: As I read this book, I kept checking to spine to see if it had "T" for teen or "YA" for Young Adult on it. It reads like a slightly long "Magic Tree House" book--no character development, fairly boring & predictable plot, and glaringly obvious references that no 12-year-old could miss. The Solter family spends their summers in an alternate Earth timeline... one where the Roman Empire was never defeated. Life in this timeline is much as it was 2000 years ago, although gunpowder (and, therefore, cannons and such) has recently been invented. The Solters are very careful about fitting in with the natives and not disturbing the timeline (can anyone say "Prime Directive"?) When Mom develops appendicitis, the parents suddenly have to return to their Home Line, leaving the teens behind. How the teens handle the situation, in the midst of a brewing war, makes up most of the story. The premise of this book is promising, and it could be a great read... but it's not. Turtledove never truly develops the characters into people you might care about. Dad just cracks awful puns, Mom puts up with it, son Jeremy is appalled by the custom of wearing furs, and daughter Amanda abhors the practice of keeping slaves. The kids miss the comforts of home, but they deal with the situation. And that's about it! When the kids are left alone to fend for themselves, I found that I really didn't care what happened to them. A cannonball falls through the roof? Oh well. The officials try to investigate them, possibly discovering their real origins? So what. Overall, this book is truly aimed at a junior high audience. In that light, it might be interesting for your average 13-year-old. For adults, though, this book falls far short of the mark. If your young teen is interested in this sort of thing, tell him/her to check out the local library. Don't waste your money on this one.
Rating: 
Summary: Good YA SF, poor for adults.
Review: As others have said, this really should be marketed as a Young Adult books. As a YA book it's a good introduction to Alternate History, and an enjoyable read. But if you put it next to the rest of his books and other Alternate History, there are two many holes for it to float on it's own. And as a aside, the most annoying thing to me was why in the world were they trading trinkets to the psuedo-romans in exchange for a few wagonloads of poor quality wheat when they could have just as easily grown millions of tons on it in robotic factory farms on one of the empty worlds that they used to get oil and minerals from?
Rating: 
Summary: Great book, if you go into it expecting a juvie
Review: Gunpowder Empires is dedicated to Heinlein for a reason. The style of this book and Heinlein's juvies seemed quite similar, to this reader. There's some explanatory text that's a fair bit longer than they might have been in adult fiction. I'm more than willing to forgive those passages, however, as when I was young, it was precisely those packages that set me to thinking and daydreaming.
As it was, I was able to finish it in a single day, and came away feeling good and quite entertained. Approach this expecting a fairly light and quick read, and you won't be disappointed. Approach this expecting mid-90s Turtledove, and you might be.
If you want a longer read with more historical detail, you might grab Household Gods, which Turtledove co-authored with Judith Tarr.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting concept, boring story
Review: In this short novel (novella?) Turtledove uses the ideal of parallel worlds and thus alternative histories. In this case, a world where the Roman Empire never fell and primitive muskets and cannons are state of the art. The twist is that living in this world are people from our own future, where they have found a way to travel to these parallel worlds and exploit their resources. As resources run low on our world, "traders" go to parallel worlds and get the stuff we need. Conceptually this is very interesting stuff, and Turtledove does a reasonable job explaining how and why history would be different, as well as how these people would have developed socially etc. He is a little sketchy on how exactly this kind of parallel world travel works (he is no Michael Crichton). The main problem with this book is that once this is all established, and the characters (Traders from our world) are set up, not much happens. The Characters seem to get into some sticky situations, but then sort of just get out of trouble, setting a pattern of non-events for the whole book. Not to give things away, but the characters are never in any "real" danger, there is no compelling narrative drive. Perhaps a worthwhile paperback or library book but save your money otherwise.
Rating: 
Summary: a ind bender, a page turner
Review: In this start to the "Cross-Time Traffic" projected three book series by Harry Turtledove, Jeremy And Amanda Solters travel from bustling late 21st century Los Angeles to "Present-day Rome". In Jeremy and Amanda's time, it is as routine as ever to travel to "alternates" in parallel universes in different timelines. They are the crosstime traders, and they are bring in the wealth and livelihood of resource starved 21st century Earth. Because resources are scarce and space even more so, family's like Amanda and Jeremy's travel to timelines much different then their own to bring back things like grain or produce to their time. In return, they sell wonderous things such as pocketwatches or Swiss army knives to the locals. In this novel, Jeremy and Amanda don't spend their suers on a beach in Florida, but trade in a Rome where the Roman empire has never fallen and life is primative. When Jeremy and Amanda's mom comes down with a sickness that can't be fixed with simple antibiotics, their parents go back to the home timeline where the children are left to fend for theirselves among falling cannonballs and snoopy prefects, with no hope whatsoever of going home. This book was a great read, even for a college age person like myself. I'm not a history buff, and I thought that this book was easily readable for someone like me. A teenager or even someone younger would I am sure find it intriguing and imaginative. In this book, I did not get tangled up on huge words and intricate plots that might be found in other 200000 word Turtledove novels. I just found a fast moving tale that's sure to engage any eager reader to jump into a transposition chamber and travel with the Soltairs family to a Rome that never was.
Rating:
Summary: Starts off pretty good but gets bad quickly.
Review: It is kind of fun to dabble in alternate history. What if... makes for some fun trips into imaginative worlds. Sadly this isn't one of them. The whole concept to me was amazingly bad. This is a society (set in 2100) that has figured out the details of time travel but can't find solutions for food and fuel shortages. In order to supplement the food shortage families are sent to alternative timelines to trade for food. These families are attempting to feed billions by trading for a few bushels of grain at an amazing cost considering the technology involved. The Salters fly across a continent and an ocean, rent a car to drive for 4 hours. And they end up coming back with perhaps $100 worth of grain. Where was that business plan written? Once the family in this particular edition (this book is part one of a series) gets to its timeline it turns into a whine fest. The kids whine about lack of convienence, paying honor to Roman Emperors, Orthodox religion, wearing fur, not once but throughout three quarters of the book. I thought Amanda and Jeromy were children of about 10 years old, not highschool juniors and seniors they were supposed to be. Instead of interacting with the alternative time it is resented. The fish out of water theme that could have been really good is not developed, in fact it is ignored. This is a happily ever after fairytale that lacks in tension and interest.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad but needs more of a story goal
Review: Jeremy and Amanda Solters thought they'd just be spending summer vacation with their parents in an alternate timeline. In a near-future earth which has discovered cross-timeline travel, this is pretty standard. Our earth needs the food and resources that can be taken from other timelines and it also gives scientists and researchers a chance to really get their hands on history. When the Solters' parents have to return to their home timeline, Jeremy and Amanda are stranded in a Roman Empire where Agripola didn't die on schedule, where Augustus's conquest of Germany was successful, and where Rome still dominates Europe, threatened only by Lithuania in the north and Persia to the east. Big and slow-moving empires (Gunpowder Empires) have dominated a significant part of Earth's history as they do in this alternate timeline. In our own history, the breakup of Rome created a number of smaller nation-states whose frequent wars gave rise to the cult of innovation and also allowed free-thinking scholars refuge if they fell out with their current government. In this alternate timeline, Roman tradition slowed scientific development. GUNPOWDER EMPIRES follows the largely abandoned tradition of writing serious SF for young-adult readers. Author Harry Turtledove writes an approachable, almost easy-read alternate history that still manages to touch on significant moral issues (although slavery is the obvious one, it isn't really a lesson that modern readers are likely to find a lot of controversy about. More interesting is his discussion of cultural relativism--as in Jeremy's abhorance of fur coats but unthinking willingness to eat meat). Even recognizing that GUNPOWDER EMPIRE is intended for young readers, I found the simplistic dialogue and the frequent repetition condescending. Also, although this is a personal preference, I prefer stories where the characters have more of a story goal. Jeremy and Amanda didn't really have anything they were trying to do, any ticking clock that they needed to work against. Instead, they merely attempted to stay alive while warfare broke out around them, and dealt with their feelings on observing a world that is different from our own, but that has many of the same characteristics. GUNPOWDER EMPIRE doesn't stack up well against the great young-adult SF of Andre Norton or Robert Heinlein, but it's a good try and an interesting bit of alternate history.
Rating:
Summary: A light read
Review: The title deliberately evokes the classic "Gunpowder God" by H Beam Piper. While it was not the first book to introduce the concept of travel to a backward parallel universe, it is widely considered to be the one of the best of its ilk. Turtledove has made his name specialising in science fiction about alternate history. So this is a natural and slight shift in emphasis, where travel is permitted between the universes. None of his other books depict this, if I recall. Certainly, the cover raises high hopes of a similarly swashbuckling tale of war, akin to Piper's classic. Alas, it falls short. The book is not military science fiction. Rather, you might consider it as a fitting sequel to "Household Gods" that Turtledove wrote with Judith Tarr. Granted that was pure fantasy, while this is hard SF. But the bulk of both books are thematically similar. Household Gods shows life in ancient Rome. This book depicts it in a Roman Empire in about 2100 CE, but at the technological level of our 17th century. In both are the gritty details of everyday life that most novels set in those eras omit. It is quite well done for that. Turtledove shows his scholarship in his attention for historical detail. The plot is quiet. The war is just a backdrop. This may disappoint some readers. He does introduce some deliberate cognitive dissonance, by having his American characters loathe the touch of furs. He uses that to place some separation between us and them, since they are depicted as being from the late 21st century. But therein is my biggest problem with this book. His depiction of that is far too similar to ours. Apart from the ability to travel between dimensions, he posits very little change. And in one paragraph, one of the characters uses a Powerbook?! In case you didn't know, that is a computer made by Apple now, in the early 21st century. What are the chances that anyone eighty years from now will use that piece of junk? Turtledove goofed on that one, sadly. But the rest of the book is ok. The closing paragraphs are the most promising. They allude to the possibility that other technologically advanced dimensions might also develop this capability. The problem is that several of these are quite loathsome and would be a mortal peril to us. Which is why we have to keep an eye on them... Does this suggest sequels of a more warlike nature?
Rating:
Summary: Homage to H. Beam Piper, and juvie coming-of-age
Review: This book is, first and foremost, a teenage coming-of-age novel. You know the kind: teenagers meet challenges that would bother adults, overcome them and prove that the young make better adults than the adults themselves. Trite, but can be entertaining. If you take it in that spirit, as a coming of age novel that happens to be SF, it's 4-star. The second thing that this book is, is an homage to H. Beam Piper. If you haven't already read Piper's _Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen_ and the Paratime stories, I'll go ahead and wait while you check those out and read them. OK, done that? Little bit on the sexist side for 2004's taste, but consider when they were written; for their time (the fifties), having Hadron Dalla be as active a character as she is in a science fiction novel was quite unusual, so Piper was doing a good job of thinking outside the usual parameters. Now, with Verkan Vall and Hadron Dalla in mind, you can see why Turtledove chose to have both a boy and a girl protagonist, and to have the girl chafe at restrictions. You should also go ahead and read Turtledove and Tarr's _Household Gods_ to get an incredibly deep feel for daily life in ancient Rome. That one's definitely not a juvenile. It's a time travel story, rather than an alternate history. In that book, our protagonist has a son and daughter, younger than the teenagers in this book. So we have a pair of brackets - the children in Household Gods, and the adults in Piper's books. That gives us an understanding about why Turtledove would choose to fill in the gap between those two. All that said - and boy, it sounds like I'm doing a book report, compare and contrast, doesn't it? - this IS still a juvie, and adult readers are still going to find it a bit lightweight. Since it's being sold as alt-history, not as a juvie, I would give it a 3-star rating: it's not bad, but it's not as good as I was expecting, or what I was expecting. I didn't really want to spend that much time reading about adolescents emailing each other from different histories. If you're a teenager, though, or an adult who wants just a light read, maybe something you can share with your teenagers to get them more into SF, or even to assign to a class, both for reading purposes and for discussions of real Roman history, and of Latin. For those purposes it would be a five-star. Hence my four-star average. The homage to Piper shows in the title, the characters, and details. Cross-time secret instead of Paratime secret, but the same secrecy. The disguise of traders as a way to get in and out of a more primitive culture. I expect we'll see more details that echo Piper in the future volumes of this series. I will be reading them - it's good enough for that - although I might opt for the paperbacks. In any event, it's good to see Turtledove do something besides his interminable alt-Civil-War, alt-WW2 series, which have been dragged out way too long if you're not someone who likes endless battle strategy scenes. This book has a few of those, but it's a different kind of war. In short? Buy it for a teen interested in SF, or for someone who particularly has an interest in the Roman Empire; read it yourself too, and enjoy it as long as you don't expect great depth.
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