May 11, 2015
Alternate-history master Turtledove (the War That Came Early series) comes up with another widescreen epic for his latest what-if scenario. It’s 1950 and the Chinese have invaded Korea. President Truman retaliates by dropping atomic bombs on strategic targets in Manchuria. Things get quickly out of hand, and Russia begins dropping A-bombs on targets in Europe and the U.S., which turns the Cold War into a hot war after only five years. To illustrate his scenario, Turtledove introduces a wide-ranging cast of one-and-a-half dimensional characters on several continents, including Marian Staley, a housewife with a husband serving in Korea, who must flee with her young daughter after nearby Seattle is nuked; Gustav Hozzel, a WWII veteran who faces Soviet tanks with Molotov cocktails when the Russians invade Germany; and Boris Gribkov, a Russian Tu-4 pilot whose bomber is retrofitted with stolen American recognition technology. The novel leapfrogs from combat scene to strategy session to military briefing and ends on an abrupt note, obviously paving the way for a sequel. But the chaotic, seemingly plotless narrative is less than satisfying to any reader who wants a dramatic payoff to all this old-school shock and awe. Agent: Russell Galen, Scovil Galen Ghosh Literary Agency.
May 15, 2015
Alternate-world warrior extraordinaire Turtledove (Last Orders, 2014, etc.) delivers the opening barrage of a new speculative conflict: What if President Harry Truman had ordered nuclear weapons to be used in the Korean War? He might well have done so. Gen. Douglas MacArthur certainly urged him to. Here, asserting that Stalin would not retaliate and didn't have that many atomic bombs anyway, MacArthur persuades Truman to strike Chinese cities in Manchuria. It proves to be a disastrous miscalculation. The USSR immediately attacks cities in Britain, France, and Germany. Escalation follows retaliation, and before the world's leaders have quite grasped what's happening, a nuclear war is underway. Those familiar with Turtledove's distinctive method, however, know the focus will remain on ordinary characters and how they cope with their particular circumstances. This time they fall naturally into three groups. There are the pilots who drop the bombs, such as Air Force 1st Lt. Bill Staley and Boris Gribkov of the Soviet Union. Combatants on the ground include, in Europe, ex-Wehrmacht man Gustav Hozzel and Soviet tank man Konstantin Morozov, while infantry Lt. Cade Curtis becomes stranded behind enemy lines in Korea after his platoon gets wiped out. And there are civilians who must find ways to survive nearby atomic blasts. Seattle housewife Marian Staley hasn't seen her husband for more than a year. Washing machine installer Aaron Finch of San Francisco captures a downed Soviet flyer. World War II widow Daisy Baxter owns a pub near Norwich. Ihor Shevchenko labors on a Ukrainian collective. And ethnic Russian Vasili Yasevich helps clean up Harbin. Readers who savor the patient accumulation of detail around each one will find it easy to become thoroughly addicted. Definitely worth a try for Turtledove fans and armchair warriors in general.
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June 1, 2015
Turtledove is an undisputed centerpiece of the alternate-history genre, and now, to his already grand display, he's adding the ambitious tale of a WWIII that could have happened. As he has it, China decides it cannot risk the possibility of America's total victory in the Korean War, and, just five years after Japan's surrender to the U.S., the People's Republic of China joins the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea in the war to preserve and spread communism throughout the Korean peninsula. In response, a frightened U.S. annihilates Manchuria with its most effective weapon to date: the atomic bomb. Turtledove's thorough research and grounded imagination work to create a frighteningly realistic past where world leaders act out of desperation and fatalism, and a large cast of common folk suffer the consequences. The somewhat daunting multitude of characters and their discrete stories can warble in quality among the collection, but the vicarious sense of eschatological dread is always powerful and personal.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)