Book 41

"The Great War: American Front" by Harry Turtledove

Have ye ever got 2/3 of the way through a book and suddenly realised that ye've read it afore? I was reading "American Front" and thinking to myself from time to time "this is just like the last WWI Harry Turtledove I read". And with good reason.

The basic story is that the South (aka the Confederate States of America) won the civil war and split the country in two. Then 1914 rolls around and WWI breaks out with the United States of America (the North) on the side of the Germans and the Confederate States (the South) on the side of England. There's a land war on North America as well as Europe and nastiness ensues. And Turtledove manages to make it kinda dull. Another realisation I had halfway through the book was that I was mainly reading it because I had started it. I was mildly interested in what was happending, but there are about a dozen different plot strands running through the bok and although the research was obviously in depth and the ideas behind the book are excellent, the execution is often clunky and regularly repetitive. Turtledove again over-emphasises his point on numerous occasion and one is left with a "we know, Harry, now get on with the story" feeling.

I'm not completely dismissing the book, and will no doubt grab the sequels in the future, if for nothing else than idle 50 Book challenge fodder, but a lor of polishing still needed doing on this one, and maybe the excising of one or two tertiary plots.

And, yes, I am counting this toward my total, even though I have read it before, because I didnae realise til 2/3 of the way through and a damn well read the whole bloody thing anyway.

Two Communist Negroes out of five, with a half a Communist Negro subtracted because it was so unmemorable took me so long to realise I'd read the damn book before!