Rating: 
Summary: Mundane world of 21st Century Reich
Review: When first reading the synopsis of Turtledove's new book, I was interested: a Third Reich existing into the early 21st century? Has to be good, right?
Well, not exactly: Turtledove does give decent allusions of the imagined world around the Reich, but almost never reaches beyond the mundane suburb-to-downtown Berlin commute. Indeed, I found the two primary male characters on the same bus and train too many times not to be painfully evident.
Don't expect an epic tale of fascist/Jew struggle: this novel merely states repetitive worryings and bickerings of a few children and bland adults.
Rating: 
Summary: The eighty year Reich
Review: When reading reviews of any Harry Turtledove book, it's difficult to miss the phrase "The Master of Alternate History." Once again, Turtledove shows us why that label keeps getting pinned on. _In the Presence of Mine Enemies_ is a new standalone book, from a writer who specializes in multivolume series. And it is his most personal work yet. I had the priviledge to meet Turtledove at WorldCon 2002 in San Jose, and he described this upcoming novel in very emotional terms. Another fan seemed distinterested, and asked when one of his series would be returned to, and Turtledove went on to explain that given his family's history, this work compelled him to finish it. The Master of Alternate History brings us the eightieth year of the German Reich, and no one will accuse him of stealing anything from Phillip K. Dick's _The Man in the High Castle_. This work is clearly Turtledove's own.An expansion of a novella of the same name, most of the first chapter is identical to its roots. We meet Heinrich Gimpel, who works in the army's budget analysis unit. His job is to predict whether the United States will pay all its tribute, and with how much fuss. Since the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht has multiple bases occupying the US, these calculations will determine whether panzers roll. His office mate, Willi Deutsch, performs a similar job, but while Heinrich keeps his head down and revels in calculations, Willi is loud, boisterous, and loves the ladies. We'll meet many more people over the course of the book; Walter and Esther Stutzman; he's a software developer for Zeiss (which is Microsoft and Intel in one in this timeline), she's a part-time receptionist for a pediatrician. Susanna Weiss, an unmarried professor of Medieval English in a "kueche, kirch, kinder" world; and the Gimpel and Stutzman children. As in most Turtledove novels, there are several viewpoint characters. In this one, the rotating point of view moves among six people, but they all have the same secret: right in Berlin, the capital of the German empire, all are secretly Jews. Hidden in plain sight by their quietude, their fitting in, and by Walter Stutzman's hacking the geneological records database, their biggest fear is what their children will do when they are old enough to learn who they really are. Did I mention how personal a story this is for Turtledove? Heinrich Gimpel clearly IS Harry Turtledove. Gimpel means "bullfinch" (Turtledove already writes historical novels under the German equivalent Turteltaub). Heinrich's wife is the former Lise Frank; Harry's wife is named Laura Frankos. Both couples have three daughters. And Heinrich, just like Ealstan in Derlavai, and so many other characters in his other novels, always does an excellent job, and values rational thought over emotional reactions. Lise is just as level-headed, but more empathetic, while oldest daughter Alicia is exactly like her dad. And the book begins with Alicia, at age ten, discovering that most of what she's learned in school is a complete lie. Gimpel is one of those characters who cannot stay out of trouble no matter how hard he tries to. Willi Deutsch's wife Erika is determined to have an affair with Heinrich, no matter how often he refuses. Erika and her husband's marital spats are destined to splatter all over Gimpel. Heinrich also has his work profile raised uncomfortably high when the new Fuhrer seeks him out to decide whether to remove more German troops from the US. Everyone wants to talk politics with him, while all he wants to do is keep from being noticed. We learn plenty about the German Reich through Alicia Gimpel. The only young viewpoint character, we overhear her school lessons in politics, geography, and anthropology (Aryan vs. Untermann). She observes that some of her classmates would do better at school if they didn't spend all their time watching the "televisor." (And even a frequently used wooden paddle on the butt doesn't change their actions.) Politics are a constant thrum throughout the novel. While this society was set up for leaders to lead and everyone else to cheerfully obey, the new Fuhrer is determined to change this. So what begins as a frightening analog of 21st century USA, with computers, television ads, and evening newscasts, soon morphs into 1989-91 Russia. Leader Buckliger begins questioning how things were always done, which threatens some and excites most others. Reading any Turtledove novel always leads to bad puns and name remapping. The old fuhrer is named Kurt Haldweim, get it? The new fuhrer is named Buckliger, which means "hunchback." And since the latter half of the book was so suggetive of Moscow in 1991, I looked up hunchback in Russian; it's "gorbin." (Gorbachov + Putin?) While I can't equate the names Stolle and Yeltsin, it's pretty clear the mayor of Berlin is modeled after the one from Moscow. Despite the too-rigid mapping of '91 Moscow to 2003 Berlin, this book is incredibly nuanced and detailed. The head of the KGB, whoops, the SS, will deal with a very determined hacker. Gimpel and his children are accused of being Jews and become unwilling guests of the Security Police. Offhand comments of death and destruction rained down on the US, Poland, Russia, and many other lands are far more chilling than many battle scenes could be. Warsaw-style ghettoes in New York and Los Angeles, mentioned in the same manner, also brought a shiver. Read, enjoy, and be very glad for what did not happen.
Rating: 
Summary: Turtledove's alt-hist take on the fall of the Soviet Union
Review: With a title like "In the Presence of Mine Enemies", and a story concept like what we have here (hidden Jews trying to survive in a world where Nazi Germany won World War II and subsequently conquered America), one might not expect the book to turn out to be Turtledove's alternate-history take on the last years of the Soviet Union...but that's exactly what it is. Building on a short story which originally appeared in his collection _Departures_, Turtledove cleverly expands on that base and incorporates the real-world events of 1985-1991 (for instance, the incident where hardline Nazis try to embarrass the reformist Fuhrer by publishing a savagely critical letter in the press while he's on a foreign trip precisely parallels a notorious real-life incident where Gorbachev's reactionary enemies within the Communist Party tried to show him up by ginning up a critical letter), putting his own unique twist on them. The book sort of peters out after the climactic events, but overall it's quite a satisfying read - more so, for instance, than his more recent _Days of Infamy_.
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