Hey, there's WORDS on these pages!

So, having blathered on about games enough the past few days and wanting a bit of a break…let’s talk books shall we (we shall. Really, you don’t get a vote, and I want to talk books, so it’s happening)?

I finally finished the 4th (and final) book in Harry Turtledove’s ‘Settling Accounts’ series, In at the Death. If you’re at all interested in alternative historical fiction I cannot recommend that series enough. Basically (without giving too much away), while Britain, France and Russia (still under the control of the Tsar) fight Germany, Italy and Austria in Europe, the United States and Confederate States (who won the Civil War) clash in North America during the period when WW2 happened in real life. It took a little while for me to ‘find my feet’ with the series, so to speak, simply because I found out later that this is actually part of a series called Timeline 191 which covers a LOT of history and sets up things where they begin in Settling Accounts.

First was a standalone book called How Few Remain, which covered the Civil War (where, obviously, the Confederates emerge victorious and Britain and France basically force a mediation that creates 2 nations in America, the USA and the CSA. Lincoln becomes an historical joke and his Republican party is crushed in ensuring elections. The US not only gives up Maine to British-held Canada as payment for their mediation, they also can’t afford to buy Alaska, so it remains Russian.

Next up is the Great War trilogy. WW1 starts as normal, only the USA begins mobilizing to aid their German ally, the CSA mobilizes to aid their British and French allies, and fighting breaks out in North America between the two sides again. The US ALSO launches invasions of the Hawaiian Islands and Canada, both held by Britain. Utah splits off from the US and declares itself the Independent Nation of Deseret. A large chunk of the black populace stages the Red Revolution (socialism has become a major political force in the USA, and the southern blacks latch on to the concept of marxism). In the end, the US takes back Utah, and ends up controlling Canada and Hawaii after the CSA is done in by advanced US tank tactics and seeks out a peace.

Next is the American Empire Trilogy. Here we follow the rise of the Freedom Party in the CSA and the USA’s fall in to comfort and demilitarization. It basically ends where Settling Accounts begins.

I fully intend to go back and read those earlier series as well, and Turtledove has written a lot of other alternative history books that aren’t linked to these…some are downright nuts (every nation of men must come together in WW2 to fight the common threat of alien lizardmen) to interesting (at the end of WW2, Reinhart Heydrich leads a German insurgency against the victorious Allies. In typical Turtledove fashion, it melds some truth…there were limited SS ‘Werewolf’ units that did this very thing after the war…with a modern allegory, as the German insurgency basically mirrors the insurgency in Iraq). He’s written books and series’ covering The Iron Age, Mediterranean traders in the BC days, fantasy books about countries warring via magic…basically everything.

DEFINITELY an author worth checking out.