AH Novels to Avoid

Willmatron

Banned
What books should we avoid in the area of alternate history?

As cool as Harry Turtledove is I suggest avoiding Into the Darkness. It's essentially WW2 with magic. I didn't get far enough into it to know if Japan shows up in it. But it's a World War two novel series where magic replaces technology. There's something similar to the Holocaust and nuclear weapons.

The novels too closely matched WW2 to be interesting for me.
 
What books should we avoid in the area of alternate history?

As cool as Harry Turtledove is I suggest avoiding Into the Darkness. It's essentially WW2 with magic. I didn't get far enough into it to know if Japan shows up in it. But it's a World War two novel series where magic replaces technology. There's something similar to the Holocaust and nuclear weapons.

The novels too closely matched WW2 to be interesting for me.

Into the Darkness isn't even AH. Its set on a completely different world. Turtledove did a few fantasy books that were thinly veiled rehashing the American Civil War, etc.
 

Willmatron

Banned
I still see it as AH because he replaced magic with technology, but had a number of nations replace OTL nations. It's basically what if magic was technology, but others things remained the same.
 

Sabot Cat

Banned
The Gallatin Universe series by L. Neil Smith (not sure if that's the formal name for the series). It's the most absurd alternate history I've ever had the misfortune of reading. Washington executed by the United States? The South just okay with slavery ending in 1820? ENFRANCHISEMENT OF GREAT APES AND DOLPHINS?!
 

Sabot Cat

Banned
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

WHAT!?!?!?!?!?!?!!?!?!?!?!?1?!?!?!?!!!!??!?!!?!?

Edited because I can't remember properly if it was the 19th Century, but in this universe, the super-duper utopian North American Confederacy was able to create technology that allowed nearly perfect communication with great apes (and later on dolphins, in the 1920's I think), showing that they are sentient, and are thus granted voting rights.
 
The Gallatin Universe series by L. Neil Smith (not sure if that's the formal name for the series). It's the most absurd alternate history I've ever had the misfortune of reading. Washington executed by the United States? The South just okay with slavery ending in 1820? ENFRANCHISEMENT OF GREAT APES AND DOLPHINS?!
You mean The Probability Broach? That was a fun read in its own nonsensical way, or at least the graphic novel is. Especially since he was trying to take Libertarianism seriously but didn't want it to be boring so it ends up being silly and more of a parody anyway. I mean seriously, the US just lets itself get nuked because right to bear arms?

Also, his Roswell, Texas graphic novel is similar, but with Texaswank and more cameos.
 
The third book in Turtledove's Atlantis series, Liberating Atlantis, was one of the worst books I've ever read — implausible, tedious, and, with no maps and maybe three place names, confusing as hell.
 
Man with the Throne Heart. Turtledove at his most heavy-handed and unsubtle, with gruellingly repetitive dialogue. The Nazis are like members of the Race, utterly unable to even grasp the concept of democracy and freedom of speech, as if they had never lived in the Weimar Republic. They are also freakishly ingenious to a utterly implausible degree. The continual comparisons drawn to the war on terror are nauseating and preachy, as is Turtledove's evident anti-European chauvinism.
 

Grey Wolf

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Anybody who has written anything here, IS better than Conroy!!!! 1901 is just crap and Red Inferno is so bad I coundn't finish it and then chucked it away. It isn't good enough for a jumble sale!

While I disagree with you, I also think that advising people to avoid a book is a bit much. For example, I read "Marching Through Georgia" and I can say on the one hand that all the stuff about how this weapon or that vehicle had been changed or improved read to me as completely irrelevant military porn, I would also say the parts set among the Draka in South Africa were rather good.

It might be better to say this thread is for books which we would advise people against buying for much money.

By all means, buy "Stars and Stripes" for 50p from your local charity shop and see what you think of it? After all, although I thought it implausible anti-British bollocks, I still read it to the end.

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
The only Conroy book I liked was 1945.
Red Inferno is disgusting, the man writes Soviets like some authors write Nazis. Actually I take that back, if a writer wrote the Nazis the way Conroy writes Soviets people would say he is over doing it.
 
Russian Amerika by Stoney Compton.

If you like cliches on top of cliches this is the book for you. The action was even cliche 1960's b-movie stuff.
 
I've read a few of Conroy's books and consider them escapist AH. I think his 1901, 1862 and 1942 are pretty good. L. Neil Smith's Gallatin Universe was interesting and was one of the few that has a fairly detailed timeline in the back of one of the books.
 
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