The Victorious Opposition (American Empire, Book Three)

First off, I like how Harry killed off most of his dead weight (i.e. Nellie Jaccobs and Sylvia Enos Lucien Galtier but the way how he died I'm sure most men would have loved to depart the Earth). I liked Sylvia but she started going down hill after she shot Roger Kimball back in book 5 (American Empire: Blood & Iron) and began dating that violatile loser Ernie who popped her in the end. Nellie just became that annoying grandma you have to visit in the summer and have to be nice to her but she gets to say and do what she likes. . . Bitter old crone. Good replacements for the Settling Account Trilogy (i.e. George Enos II and Armstrong Grimes and Leonard O'Doull). The plot mirrors slightly with real histroy but goes off on some points with the Munich Pact(Richmond Pact if Harry ever gives the talks between Freatherson and Smith a name), Austria(Kentucky and Houston), Mexican Civil War between the Confederate backed Imperialists and the Union backed Republicans(Spanish Civil War between the Facist backed Nationalists and the Soviet backed Loyalists). Nicely done. Many of you agree with me....where was the alternate Jesse Owens for the 1936 Richmond Games? I would have laughed to read about a union black athlete showing up a confederate white from Featherson's point of view when he'd get up staged just like Hitler did. I'm surprise Scipio/Xerxes doesn't get seen by Anne Colleton until near the end of the book. Perhaps something for the next one. He has been able to stay away from her for 23 some odd years with a bounty on his head is nothing short of a mircle. Harry does have some problems with the repetitiveness about Cartsen being sun burned and Scipio getting laughed at but overall well liked and read. North America is going to war and Harry is our news man.

When reading Turtledove's alternate history series of the Great War and years thereafter, I sometimes wonder why I put up with wooden, sometimes annoying characters and shallow sub-plots in order to have my curiosity satisfied about what happens next in his world. It reminds me of a soap opera in which the audience is always left hanging with an excruciating path to any sense of resolution. With the Victorious Opposition I now understand the appeal of this series. Although few of these books stand up by themselves, the sum of the books is a great story that is hard to put down. What seemed shallow becomes substantial. In fact, "The Sum is Stronger than the Parts" could be the title of one of the installments. Victorious Opposition was the best of the post Great War series as it portrays a reticent U.S. unwilling to deal with an ascendant Confederacy led by an America style Fuehrer bent on revenge against those whom he believes stifled him, both inside and outside his own country. Such a close similarity to "you know who" and his henchman may be a cheap trick and a "paint by numbers" construction, but Turtledove pulled if off neatly. The book ended with quite a bang and promises of much more to come as it transitioned to a rematch between the U.S. and Confederacy. I also enjoyed the cameo appearances by people such as Mordecai "Three Fingers" Brown (no baseball hall of fame in this universe), New Mexico Congressman Barry Goldwater, and sportscaster Dutch Reagan. A couple of things I wish Turtledove would include are campaign maps and greater detail of what happens outside North America. Nevertheless, I am so eager to read the next installment that I purchased it in hardcover rather than waiting for the paperback.

Alternative history is a branch of modern literature which provides a distorted but tremendously enlightening reflection of the world we all live in today. This 3rd entry in Turtledove's series after the Great War seems his best work to date, with the promise of an even more engaging story to come. The current novel postulates that the terrible Fascist/Nazi experiments of the 20th Century would have inevitably been inflicted upon our world regardless of the outcome of WWI. His inclusion of well-known historical figures from our time who are thrust into completely different lives by the vagaries of historical events is quite refreshing. I particularly enjoyed reading about a certain skilled writer named Ernie who, seriously wounded in his privates while serving as an ambulance driver in the Great War, could never ultimately cope with his inability to live a life of full-blossomed manhood. I wonder who Harry had in mind there... Hey, if you enjoy Turtledove's alternative history, this is a much more satisfying read than the last 2 entries in this series. This book has warts; it still suffers from the classic Turtledove defect of excessive repetition which unnecessarily slows the pace. Still, in the end, when one considers the frightening similarity Harry constructs between the events leading up to the historical "Fall Weiss" invasion of Poland in 1939 and Turtledove's "Blackbeard" in the Western Hemisphere, it leaves one eagerly waiting to find out just how WWII turns out in Turtledove's alternative universe. Keep 'em coming, Harry!

In a world that never was but could haven been, the Confederacy won the War of Succession and the United States had to recognize them as a sovereign nation. As the victors, they imposed certain restrictions on the way the United States governed itself. When the Great War broke out, the United States was the winner, wrestling territory away from the Confederacy and bringing it into the union.To prevent Britain from ever being a threat in the USA again, the army marched into Canada and made it a territory of America. Canada is no longer a recognized country and all laws and military rules come from the American Army of Occupation. Texas is part of the CSA but during the Great War, the US annexed part of the state naming it Houston and bringing it into the Union. Sequoyah is a part of the USA but like Houston and Kentucky (which was also forcibly brought back into the USA) they want to rejoin the CSA.There are very few blacks in the USA and most of them live in Kentucky. Former slaves trying to leave the CSA are turned back at the US border. When the world plunges into a Depression, the fascist Freedom party elects Jake Featherston president. He uses strong-arm tactics against his enemies, takes control of the radio and newspapers and sets up internment camps for political prisoners and Red Negroes. He begins building tractors and farm equipment at a fast rate so that the Black sharecroppers become redundant. Many resort to fighting a guerrilla war while others go begging for take menial jobs in the cities.Under the terms of the 1917 Armistice, the CSA military is sharply curtailed but Featherston finds ways of getting around the restrictions. He is slowly building up the military strength of the CSA to the level it was in 1863. His freedom party goons are agitating in Sequoyah, Houston and Kentucky for a plebiscite and the socialist president of the USA finally allows the people of those states to vote on whether they want to stay in the USA or leave and rejoin the CSA. Many people in both countries believe that another war between the USA and CSA is inevitable.Harry Turtledove is the recognized grand master of alternative history and in AMERICAN EMPIRE: THE VICTORIOUS OPPOSITION; he shows his talent grows with each book he writes. The Freedom Party can be compared with the rise of the Nazi Party in our universe and just like the SS troopers; the high-ranking members in the party use the same strong-arm tactics to cow the populace. Instead of Jews being discriminated against, the Blacks are the scapegoats. France and Russia sided with the confederacy and when they lost the war, they had to obey the terms of the armistice but they are unhappy and ready to go to war again to regain their freedoms. France especially wants to regain Alsace-Lorraine from Germany but are wary of fighting the Germans a third time.The characters in this novel are real people representing all walks of life so that the reader has a very visual picture of wha

Harry Turtledove has done it again. That's the only way to say it. This book is worth every penny. It is so gripping, and so full of story, that it puts the first two American Empire books to shame. I loved the Great War series so much, I gave Turtledove the benefit of the doubt that he was building up to something, and was he ever! Turtledove is the most imaginative author of our time, and the combination of story and characters once again proves to be amazing. Not since I read "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" have I been so amazed at how thought-provoking a book can be. There is a subtlety in this entire series that screams at you if you listen for it, and this book presents it better than any that came before.Harry Turtledove is truly a brilliant man. He has captured the evil in this world, and put in a different one, and by doing so he shows us that this evil is not as far away from us as we would like to think. Jefferson Pinkard and Mary Pomeroy and Jonathan Moss burn with an intensity that is disturbing because it is so understandable. Alternate history is a wonderful genre because it allows us a bit of perspective to understand our own world. The understanding to be gained from this book is powerful and deep and definitely worth it.