https://www.amazon.com/Fallout-Hot-...d=1470286497&sr=8-1&keywords=Harry+Turtledove
Has anyone read Turtledove's newest book yet?
Has anyone read Turtledove's newest book yet?
Harry Turtledove: Fallout (Hot War Book 2)
- Thread starter CT23
- Start date
sdrucker
Banned
Yes, and even for him it's repetitive and predictable. Pure product, and I'm getting really sick of his Russian speakers (with a couple of exceptions) speaking almost exclusively in mat' . At least he's cheaper now if you buy him on Kindle than hardcover.
I'm becoming convinced a living, breathing HT was replaced by an AI and an ethnically appropriate random name generator some time after he wrote the first few Great War books.
I'm becoming convinced a living, breathing HT was replaced by an AI and an ethnically appropriate random name generator some time after he wrote the first few Great War books.
Honestly, a lot of the time I skipped through a lot of the POVs to get to Truman's sections so I could find out what was going on. Like the last one it had too many "common" characters.
Also, if you thought the Soviets did too well in the last one, one will probably not like this book either.
Also, if you thought the Soviets did too well in the last one, one will probably not like this book either.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
Agreed, I got it from the Library. I consider it barely worth the time invested in reading, and not worth actually buying
My critiques of the military situation shown in book I are even worse with this one
I don't know the exact numbers, but at this time (early 50s) didn't the US have a lot more nukes than the Soviets? I.e., if somehow the Soviets could reach cities on both US coasts (and I'm not denying the US would get hurt in this book)...then shouldn't the Soviet Union be absolutely flattened by this point?
RamscoopRaider
Donor
US had 438 in 51, 841 52 USSR 25 in 51, 50 in 52. The Soviets essentially blew their whole stockpile in the books, the US hasn't, 300 bombs should have hurt the USSR a lot more, much less 600 or 700
Meanwhile we don't see the B-36 or B-50, and get confirmed that even deep strikes were by B-29
The Soviets had to use in flight refueling to hit the US, which was only fitted to 4 aircraft OTL
2 more points I thought of:
1-Shouldn't we be seeing the B-47 by now? I know about the B-36 but the B-47 was also coming into service about this time IIRC.
2-People have responded to questions like ours in other places by saying things like the Soviets have been bombed too. However, if we look at the capabilities of the two powers at the time of the book and accept that somehow the Soviets can hit targets way inland on the continental US...if damage should be relative to power then shouldn't the USSR be virtually destroyed back to the stone age by now and not just hurt badly?
RamscoopRaider
Donor
Yeah the B-47 entered service in June of 51, of course the bombing near Seattle might have thrown a monkey wrench into things. Still it wasn't considered operational until 53
USSR should have eaten around 150-250 nukes (plan was 300, but assume some turn out duds and others get shot down). Issue is SAC didn't know where all the Soviet targets were, their primary mission was crippling Soviet nuclear capabilities, second was stopping a soviet ground attack, and third was hitting industrial targets. If they followed plans, well the Soviet Union would have had some cities hit, but mostly military targets, of course if that happened then the Soviet ground offensive should have petered out from lack of supplies before getting close to France
Also, shouldn't the Soviet strategy of "use B-29 look-alikes to nuke US cities" have only worked about once or twice before the US issued a shoot on sight order against anything that looks like a B-29 not specifically authorized to be in an area?
RamscoopRaider
Donor
That actually makes sense, they did it all at once, by the time the orders got out, the bombs had already been dropped. They stopped the pretense after the first wave AFAIK
Anyways, do you have hope for book 3 when it comes out?
I may check it out from my local library and skim the plot (hopefully less 'grunt' 'common' characters and at least one more perspective character added) but I'm not enthusiastically looking forward to it.
RamscoopRaider
Donor
Not too much, but my Library tends to get new Turtledoves, and its something to read at 3AM when crap's on the TV and I don't want to log on AH.com before going to work
So I read this book a while back, and what truly bothers me is how few events actually take place between the start of the book and its ending. There's plenty of fighting depicted, but it's mostly just padding--it doesn't advance the story greatly or even provide a particularly clear view of the geopolitical situation (unless you go to the trouble of having a map of Germany on hand while reading). At the end of the first one, we had the Red Army grinding its way from the Elbe to the Rhine. Here, they reach the Rhine, are thrown back, end of book.
That I'd re-read The Guns of the South a while earlier made this shortcoming particularly stark in my mind. In that book, Turtledove's depictions of combat further both the alternate history and the plot and themes of the book as a novel. The Battle of the Wilderness shows the effectiveness of the AK-47s, the Battle of Bealeton introduces US Colored troops and shows how they impact the way our Confederate viewpoint characters think about slavery and the relative merits of white and black people, and the Battle of Washington provides an endgame to the war and feeds seamlessly into the conversations of Lee with Lincoln and Lord Lyons.
Here, however, the combat scenes just kind of fill space. Our Red Army tanker and Ukrainian infantryman and Wehrmacht retread go and fight and move around and...that's about it. We don't really get scenes of the Russians gazing upon the greater wealth of the American-funded Bundesrepublik, nor do we get all that much of the Germans saying or thinking much beyond "just like old times, ja?" The Hungarian Jew is the most interesting viewpoint character in Europe, in this regard, since he actually comments on the cynicism with which Horthyist Magyars are thrown against Americans, and his interactions with the Hungarian fascist in the POW camp are actually entertaining.
There is opportunity in the next book for much more interesting material--our Ukrainian soldier is now fighting in Poland, which provides an excellent opportunity for him to reflect on the ancient nationalistic hatreds between Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians. We now have an SS man for a viewpoint character among the Germans--in the right hands, that could be an interesting study into how a guy whose entire guiding ideology is that the strong races should dominate the weak reconciles the fact that he's fighting as cannon fodder for Jewish Capitalism against Judeo-Bolshevism. The British civilian seemed to get killed before she could do anything interesting, but Turtledove hints at a rising tide of sympathy with actual Communism among the working classes of America and Britain. But Turtledove's long been in the bad habit of stretching himself too thin between too many viewpoint characters. He doesn't give any one of them the attention they need, when they really could be interesting stories, so I'm not sure that Turtledove will adequately exploit those opportunities.
Also, I'm kind of miffed that I saw neither Russian fascists nor Polish partisans (except the last pages, for the latter). The book's jacket lied to me.
EDIT: Also, the frequent questions of "how much of the world will be intact when the war's over?" and "what does it do to a man's mind to keep nuking cities over and over" got annoyingly repetitive. It's good that Turtledove's asking these questions--they provide opportunity for character development--but it would be nice if he showed more of the impact that that question has on people (for the first question) and gave answers deeper than "I serve the Soviet Union!" for the second. I mean, come on. These are Russian pilots who lived through WWII, a literal race war of extermination. Might they not see some parallels between their current struggle and the last one? "Finally, we Slavs strike back against the Westerners who have sought our annihilation for 500 years!" or "Oh no, we're as bad as the Hitlerites!" Some resolution to the introspection would be nice.
That I'd re-read The Guns of the South a while earlier made this shortcoming particularly stark in my mind. In that book, Turtledove's depictions of combat further both the alternate history and the plot and themes of the book as a novel. The Battle of the Wilderness shows the effectiveness of the AK-47s, the Battle of Bealeton introduces US Colored troops and shows how they impact the way our Confederate viewpoint characters think about slavery and the relative merits of white and black people, and the Battle of Washington provides an endgame to the war and feeds seamlessly into the conversations of Lee with Lincoln and Lord Lyons.
Here, however, the combat scenes just kind of fill space. Our Red Army tanker and Ukrainian infantryman and Wehrmacht retread go and fight and move around and...that's about it. We don't really get scenes of the Russians gazing upon the greater wealth of the American-funded Bundesrepublik, nor do we get all that much of the Germans saying or thinking much beyond "just like old times, ja?" The Hungarian Jew is the most interesting viewpoint character in Europe, in this regard, since he actually comments on the cynicism with which Horthyist Magyars are thrown against Americans, and his interactions with the Hungarian fascist in the POW camp are actually entertaining.
There is opportunity in the next book for much more interesting material--our Ukrainian soldier is now fighting in Poland, which provides an excellent opportunity for him to reflect on the ancient nationalistic hatreds between Poles, Russians, and Ukrainians. We now have an SS man for a viewpoint character among the Germans--in the right hands, that could be an interesting study into how a guy whose entire guiding ideology is that the strong races should dominate the weak reconciles the fact that he's fighting as cannon fodder for Jewish Capitalism against Judeo-Bolshevism. The British civilian seemed to get killed before she could do anything interesting, but Turtledove hints at a rising tide of sympathy with actual Communism among the working classes of America and Britain. But Turtledove's long been in the bad habit of stretching himself too thin between too many viewpoint characters. He doesn't give any one of them the attention they need, when they really could be interesting stories, so I'm not sure that Turtledove will adequately exploit those opportunities.
Also, I'm kind of miffed that I saw neither Russian fascists nor Polish partisans (except the last pages, for the latter). The book's jacket lied to me.
EDIT: Also, the frequent questions of "how much of the world will be intact when the war's over?" and "what does it do to a man's mind to keep nuking cities over and over" got annoyingly repetitive. It's good that Turtledove's asking these questions--they provide opportunity for character development--but it would be nice if he showed more of the impact that that question has on people (for the first question) and gave answers deeper than "I serve the Soviet Union!" for the second. I mean, come on. These are Russian pilots who lived through WWII, a literal race war of extermination. Might they not see some parallels between their current struggle and the last one? "Finally, we Slavs strike back against the Westerners who have sought our annihilation for 500 years!" or "Oh no, we're as bad as the Hitlerites!" Some resolution to the introspection would be nice.
Turtledove's sympathies have appeared neoconservative to me for a while--I suppose I could see that, with McCarthy as Trump, the rising tide of leftism among the American and British viewpoint characters as representing the brief surge of support for Sanders, and Truman's discussion of Eisenhower as representing an ideal, moderate neocon Republican that doesn't exist.