Just Finished Reading: American Empire – The Victorious Opposition by Harry Turtledove.

In an Alternate World where the South won the Civil War Jake Featherston has achieved his ambition by becoming President of the Confederate States. Driven by his need for revenge against the United States for its defeat of the Confederacy in the Great War, Featherston eliminates all opposition to his political power and begins the long process of rearming. Meanwhile the USA stumbles from government to government gripped by a seemingly endless recession. Fighting insurrection in Utah and revolt in Occupied Canada its resources are stretched to the limit. Much too late the US realises that there is a tiger outside their door just waiting to leap. The waiting is almost over and war banners are beginning to fly on both sides of the Ohio River.

This was the 7th book in a very long running series of large (this book being 675 pages) volumes based in a detailed Alternate 20th Century. Though not without the usual Turtledove irritations – including constantly repeating who the characters are by their histories, associations or habits – this was still a fairly entertaining work. Taking place from the mid 1930’s until the July of 1941 several of the main characters inevitably died in this book of everything from heart attack to terrorist bomb. Also – again rather inevitably – things got darker as the book progressed and not just because the characters begin to realise that another bloody war is on its way. Turtledove is basically re-writing European history on the Continental United States which means that one side in the conflict gets to ‘play’ Nazi Germany in his drama. That player is the Confederate States. But in this reality it’s not the Jews that suffer the ‘final solution’ but the Black population who are systematically oppressed and then exterminated. It certainly doesn’t make for pleasant or entertaining reading but does provide the novel with some of its most harrowing and disturbing moments.

The only thing left now is to read his continuing epic series as it moves into the Second World War – told in another 4 large volumes. I think I shall save that pleasure for a little later in the year. Turtledove is not exactly a great author – or arguably even a very good one – but he does manage to write books that are entertaining enough for me at least to read thousands of pages of his work. I guess that I have at least three thousand more to go. I guess that I need to know what happens to all of those people I have watched struggle through the last 50 years in a world both very different from and hauntingly similar to our own.