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War seethed across the planet. Machines soared through the air, churned through the seas, crawled across the surface, pushing ever forward, carrying death. Earth was engaged in titanic struggle. Germany, Russia, France, China, Japan: the maps were changing day by day. The hostilities spread in ever-widening ripples of destruction: Britain, Italy, Africa...the fate of the world hung in the balance. Then the real enemy came. Out of the dark of night, out of the soft glow of dawn, out of the clear blue sky came an invasion force the likes of which Earth had never known--and worldwar was truly joined. The invaders were inhuman and they were unstoppable. Their technology was far beyond our reach, and their goal was simple: Fleetlord Atvar had arrived to claim Earth for the Empire. Never before had Earth's people been more divided. Never had the need for unity been greater. And grudgingly, inexpertly, humanity took up the challenge. In this epic novel of alternate history, Harry Turtledove takes us around the globe. We roll with German panzers, watch the coast of Britain with the RAF, and welcome alien-liberators to the Warsaw ghetto. In tiny planes we skim the vast Russian steppe, and we push the envelope of technology in secret labs at the University of Chicago. Turtledove's saga covers all the Earth, and beyond, as mankind--in all its folly and glory--faces the ultimate threat; and a turning point in history shows us a past that never was and a future that could yet come to be.… (more)
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813.54 |
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The human characters take a little time to get into their stride, but they are well enough drawn. Turtledove's historical background shows, and apart from a couple of minor slips (British characters referring to the season as 'Fall' instead of 'Autumn', and an RAF crewman with the surname Whyte who, for some unknowable reason, has not been nicknamed "Chalkie" by his colleagues) the technical and historical details are reasonably solid. Some of the major viewpoint characters have their preconceptions well and truly challenged; and one plot strand deals with the experience of the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto and their reaction to the aliens' attack on the Germans; the main Jewish character, a rabbi, only realises almost too late that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" is only ever a temporary situation.
The aliens are quite sympathetically written. They are reptilian, and come from a long-established race that has held control over their world for many tens of thousands of years. They have done this by careful forward planning and maintaining strict adherance to protocol and precedence; they have already conquered two other worlds and so consider themselves masters of the universe. Unfortunately for them, their only reconnaissance of Earth was carried out in medieval times, and the shock of finding out that some races progress far more rapidly than they expected is well put over, to the extent that the reader can easily find themselves having some sympathy with the invaders. By the end of this first novel, they have been fighting - and slowly losing - an asymmetrical war and beginning to reach the end of their resources as they never anticipated needing to actually fight to hold the world - and a colonisation fleet is only a few years behind...
I found this novel far less of a slog than its length of some 650 pages suggested, though I do wonder how the story will be sustained over the next three volumes.
--J.