Worldwar: In the Balance and Worldwar: Tilting the Balance

Rating:
Summary: lots of words for the money
Review: I have read the first three books in this trilogy-- a whole lot of words thats for sure. The story is interesting but the whole thing could have been condensed into one long book in my opinion-- the author appears to struggle with how to drag this out to four books. Story lines that are completely unnecessary and sometimes the writing is kind of silly and repetitive-- how many times he must have written the aliens name for people-- "big uglies" which seems sort of beneath an alien lifeform that can travel across galaxies as a best they can do to describe man-- sounds more like something an idiom that an Indian would have used in one of the old--old westerns. I'm wading through it but you could really read the first and last book -- and skip all the stuff in between and you wouldn't miss anything other than spending money on the two books in the middle.

Rating:
Summary: Intriguing read
Review: This was the series that got me interested in Alternative/Alternate history, which although only a subgenre, is sure to become a fearsomely self sustaining category. I have read the entire published series so far, and cannot wait till the epilogue. In this series, Turtledove envisions wartorn earth in the years when America has just set in for the fight during WWII, but to the globe's surprise an even deadlier foe from beyond our sun's gravity, has come to conquer Tosev 3 - Earth - and assimilate us "Big Uglies" into their reptillian, arrogant empire. Us humans being much too sly, clever, and of course, ingenuitive, have defied their speculations from their centuries old probe, declaring mounted knights as the greatest military threat to their hydrogen powered tanks, jets, machine guns, and nuclear weapons. The aliens took centuries upon centuries to integrate their technological advances into their society and mistakingly assumed the humans too would techno-evolve just as slowly. What I find so intriguing about this whole story is that the alien foe uses technology not too far removed from the technological evolution earth has already been heading in, making their technology believable and relatable. The idea that you also get to see things from not only human perspectives but from that of the "Race" as well is a nice touch, especially when a member of the Race is on a ginger trip, ginger being their drug of choice. There are a lot of characters to follow and some books in the series are better than the others but none fall bellow four stars which I give to the series as a whole. I do admit however that I am a bit bitter because I thought I'd be ending the story at Colonization: Aftershocks when I finished it back in 2003, but came to find out that there is one more book to be read which is to be published in 2005, and I simply don't have the patience, but I think that my bitterness is a testamet to how well I enjoyed this series.