Speaking of Turtledove...
SPOILERS WILL BE IN HERE!!!
Super had been kicking me into reading him years ago. Hadn't had time until recently. Damn sad I hadn't done it before - he is excellent. I just finished reading the first 2 novels in the Worldwar series, In the Balance (ItB) and Tilting the Balance (TtB). First thing I have to say?
TURTLEDOVE. KNOWS. HIS. SHIT.
The thing that's impressed me most so far is that he knows everything, down to the little tiny bits of information that you wouldn't expect someone to pay attention to in an alternate history novel, but him doing so makes it so much better. Case in point, he makes special note of the German Panther Ds in TtB - great tanks, but they had major fuel issues, as well as some other problems. Not until the Panther G did the Germans have what could be considered the ultimate tank of the war, with all the problems of the other Panthers (A and D primarily) finally being fixed. He's also good to mention how the Germans won with their armour - the Panzer I's and II's that conquered Poland and France won not because of being superior to their competition (well, in Poland's case, their competition were horses, but details), but through superior tactics. Hell, he even mentions the T-34 and KV-1, and draws comparisons between the Lizards and the Russians in frighteningly good detail - even with better equipment, the Russians couldn't fight the Germans properly with their airpower and tactics. Hell, he's good to mention how radar and cracking the Enigma won the Battle of Britain moreso than anything else. This guy knows his shit, and I am impressed.
He also is able to extend this to the characters. I wasn't expecting him to make Molotov such a major player, or Groves for that matter. Hell, I wasn't expecting him to even put Hitler or Roosevelt in - those are two people very, very hard to portray properly in any media, but he does it, and he does it well. Hell, Skorzeny is probably the one I've been most impressed with - he's captured nearly perfectly as the bastard he is, and smart as that. He plays along with everyone else, particularly Jaeger, amazingly well. Molotov is also fantastic - his first appearance aboard the Fleetlord's ship was...so perfectly Molotovian.
In addition, he's great at drawing parallels between real world experiences, and making things work in the timeline. By this, I mean that he's not just making up a new timeline - the things that happen are following a logical progression. There's none of this doomsday weapon shit at the last minute - everything that's happening is happening around the same time it would in the real world timeline, just somewhat inverted. Example? The Russians are the first to develop nukes, around 1944, due to acquiring more atomic material from a raid on a downed Lizard ship than any other nation, and having a headstart on it all. However, they have one, and due to their craptastic infrastructure and lack of good facilities to produce more, they look like they're stuck for a while. Guess what issues the Russians had/have in real life? In another example, Jet power is developing a little earlier, but still around the same level it normally would - it's not like the Meteor or the ME262 is on par with the Lizard fighters yet. It's nice that the Lizard technology isn't giving humanity some insane, immediate advantage - the Germans capture a tank, but don't know what to do with it, beyond the basic levels of improving armour. Same with the British capturing a Lizard fighter plane. Humanity is advancing at the normal rate it can, aided a little bit by the captured technology, but it's not like they've now gained the ability to build the Death Star or something. That would ruin this. Turtledove does a great job of keeping things believable, which helps the alternate history style he's going on. The Lizard technology is perfectly believeable - we have all of it now, just not to the extent the Lizards do.
It's also filled with some great themes so far. These include: adversity as an advantage, sex, racial tension, sex, adaptability, sex, coming to terms with trauma, and sex. Did I mention sex? Everyone seems to be having it right now >_> Which is actually relevant! The differences between the Lizards and the Humans are entirely cultural and biological - technology is similar, but the Lizards are slower, more careful, while Humanity is far more adaptable and changing. Sex helps to portray this - the Lizards are fascinated by it, since this doesn't happen to them except during breeding periods. The contrast between the two species is great. It seems crazy, an alien invasion during World War II, but it's not unbelievable - if they came pulling in X-Wings and Star Destroyers, and humanity still was fighting back, then I might be a liiiiiiitle skeptical.
It's great to see that he also has to pit humanity against humanity at points - the Poles and Jews siding with the Lizards sounds despicable, but...well, I'm sure I don't have to tell people why they might do this. It's a moral dilemma, and it's handled well.
Turtledove is also great at pointing out the ingenuity of humanity. Pissing into a Lizard sensor is golden (lol punz!).
Also, I love his writing. Such winning lines:
"Teerts wished the Race would drop a plutonium bomb on on Hiroshima. But what were the odds of that?"
Are gold. I've laughed more than I thought I would while reading these books - these lines are golden. Really looking forward to the rest of the series.
Characters thus far! Ignoring the real life ones, who have been handled amazingly well so far.
Bagnell and RAF crew - Didn't do much in the first book until they got shot down in Germany. Then we got to see them come to terms with accepting an enemy as an ally, and getting back up in the air. Then, when we get to book 2, they get stuck with the Russians and the Germans mediating a hellish conflict between the two, a disasterous offensive against a well-guarded outpost, and then they have to piece together the resistance to the Lizards. This looks like more developing later.
Goldfarb - Similar to the above, he's a radar operator, who stages the rescue of his cousin from a prison. Otherwise, pretty normal overall. The Brits are pretty normal, overall >_> However, they are exceedingly funny - their wit is fantastically written, and they strike me as overall the best comedic characters so far.
Yi Min - Hahahahahaha! You got what was coming to you, asshole. Hahahahahahahaha!!! Fucktard drug-dealer killed by a drug-addicted alien. Perfect!
Ludmilla - Female Soviet pilot, and a great character. Her relationship with Jaeger is fantastic, and it really helps punt home the fact that this war is humanity against alien - I like this relationship, and really hope it continues to grow. She's fearless, great with words, and very thoughtful. Love her.
Jaeger - The other half of the relationship, and one of my favourites here. The German perspective and the Soviet perspective are excellent. Jaeger really exemplifies the basic combat soldier (while the Brits exemplify the air warrior, and Ludmilla, for all that she is a pilot, exemplifies duty and commitment to cause more than any particular soldier designation), and is amazingly smart and well-written. He's very open in what he says, and is a great, great, amazingly great counterpart for Skorzeny. Just the chemistry with the two is fantastic.
Shultz - He's either providing more Jaeger, or a foil for Ludmilla and her NKVD policeman Sholudenko. He's the stereotypical German soldier - womanizing, haughty, but fantastically loyal and dutiful, not afraid to speak his mind and not afraid of death, even in enemy-held territory.
Jens Larssen - Poor fucking Jens. Nearly killed, then his wife marries another man and has his baby because she thinks he's dead, then she decides to foget him, then his research team abandons him, then he gets VD from someone who shows him some kindness and affection. Holy shit, this guy gets kicked in the balls. But you know what? I hope to hell he doesn't sell humanity out to the Lizards, but I can understand it. Pedaling alone on a bicycle across the entire country, with nothing anymore? It's what war will do to you.
Russie - It wouldn't be WWII without a Jewish perspective. Leading his people to the Lizards to escape the Nazi extermination, he made a tough as hell choice for his people. Honestly, I don't blame him - who would care about humanity after what the Nazis did? However, he comes to fight back, when he realizes the Lizards intend to do the same thing for the world, and he saves the day with great propaganda and fabulous Talmudic reasoning. Great.
Mutt - Can't forget the other foot-soldier of the war. Manager of a baseball team is promoted to Lieutenant, woos a lesbian almost to the point of breaking her. I like his perspective as the addled veteran. His book 2 conclusion, crying over the lesbian nurse, is...interesting. Not sure how I feel yet.
Yeager/Barbara - Poor Jens. His wife leaves him for a minor league baseball player. I can't help but feel some personal slight against Barbar, and feel empathy for Jens, though I can see what she was thinking. Her decision to stay with Yeager made sense, but damned if I don't think anyone on any side handled it well at all. It's hard to separate these two from Jens, but I think that's the point - thse two are designed specifically to provide that contrast of war - what happens when the soldier (or scientist) returns home to what he thought he had, and finds he had nothing? Plus, there's finding happiness after what you once had was lost. It's a give-take thing here, a great contrast between the two, for all that...well, POOR JENS.
Liu Han/Fiore - Poor dead Fiore. Was not expecting him to die. And it seems like Liu is poised to be a founding mother of Communism in China. An experiment in human experimentation, it's interesting to see how her little Chinese World eventually expans with the help of the "foreign devil", and how it still stays once it's cut off. Interested to see what happens to her child.
Atvar - To quote him at the end of Book 2: "I don't know" This guy is going to get shit at the start of the next book, I can see that. Being commander in chief can't be fun.
Teerts - Perfect portrayal of Japanese torture and prisoner treatment. Ugh. I feel sad for the guy, despite him trying to bomb humanity into the ground. Why did it have to be the Japanese?
Drefsab - I really wished he lived longer - the Skorzeny rivalry would have been neat to see expand further, watching as the Lizard became more human-like to beat his crafty opponent. He really did get better, and seemed to have control of his drug addiction. It just goes to show you not to shoot up in the middle of a fire-fight.
Ussmak - My favourite of the Lizards. His perspective is like that of Jaeger's - he's a tank driver, except he is the most human of the Lizards. His crewmembers die, he becomes alone, gets addicted to a drug, goes through hell with a new crew who get killed due to stupidity, gets caught up in a crew that does drugs and causes them to get mauled by the Germans under Jaeger, and then finally fixes himself, and things seem right, with a new crew that he trusts and works with. I love this - he's adapting to the problems that are kicking him in the ass, and kicking back.
Favourites so far are Jaeger, Ludmilla and Ussmak. Of the real-lifeys, Molotov, Skorzeny and Groves.
Favourite scenes? Oh, there are some great ones, top 3 or so, no particular order:
1) Molotov talking to Atvar in space. To paraphrase:
ATVAR: Our Emperor shall rule over your planet.
MOLOTOV: Emperor? Oh yes, we had one at one point. About 20 years ago, we killed him and his entire family. I helped.
ATVAR: ...
The sheer funny factor of that is how straight-forward Molotov was in saying it. And how crazily the entire Lizard group reacted to it.
2) Russie deciding to help the Lizards when he sees German soldiers pissing on a Jewish Grave. Damn strong scene there - he got his sign from Heaven, alright.
3) The end of book 2, which I summarized with Atvar's character. "I don't know" Humanity develops nukes, and now both sides are at a deadly standstill. Great way to end the book.
Looking forward to starting the next book tomorrow, Upsetting the Balance, assuming I have time at work.
