Just Finished Reading: In the Presence of Mine Enemies by Harry Turtledove

In a world where Germany and her Allies have won both the Second and Third World Wars it’s difficult to be in a minority. It’s dangerous in the extreme, however, to be a hidden Jew - especially when you’re living in the heart of the Reich and working for the Wehrmacht. Such is the secret life of Heinrich Gimpel who, along with a few close friends, attempt to keep the Jewish faith alive for at least one more generation. But when the Fuhrer dies and is replaced by a much younger man, an existence based on fear becomes one based on hope which is possibly the most dangerous thing of all – especially when a single slip can condemn everyone you love to instant death.

It’s good to be back reading SF again – even SF by Harry Turtledove. Sometimes I do wonder why I read him. He has several very annoying habits, all of which are exhibited in this chunky stand-alone volume. I’m not exactly sure why, maybe he thinks that his audience are slow witted or simply have poor memory skills, but he repeats information endlessly. OK, it’s often important information but he really doesn’t need to keep mentioning it as often as he does – like 10 or 15 times (at least). For example, he mentions repeatedly (sometimes several times on a single page) that the Jewish characters in the book need to hide their real identities from the authorities and that a single mistake could kill whole families. Yup, important bit of information. Gotcha. You may, at some point or even at several points want to drive that point home. But to then mention it around every Jewish character…. 10 or 15 times (at least)? That is just plain annoying. Turtledove also has a habit of padding his stories with trivia. If I had to read through 5 pages of one bridge game I had to read through four or five of them (which I ended up skimming through). Dull, dull, dull.

So about the first two-thirds of this book was slow reading indeed. It only got really interesting when the new Fuhrer started changing things. The author very clearly modelled this process on the concepts of Glasnost and Perestroika in the ex-Soviet Union. So much so that some of the characters where actually clearly avatars of Mikail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin. The resulting revolution in German politics and the attempted counter revolution by reactionary forces was actually well written and honestly gripping. Yet this final third of the book couldn’t save it from being a basically dull read. It Turtledove could curb his repetitions and cut out a lot of the padding he’d be a much better author. As it is I struggle to justify to myself why I read him at all. I doubt if I’ll be buying any more of his. Life is too short to sift through 500 page books looking for the good bits.