After the Downfall
By Harry Turtledove
ISBN 978-1-59780-130-0
Two stars out of five.
Pros: Interesting color and description.
Cons: Flat characters, simplistic story, limited characterization, poor printing
Despite the name emblazoned on the cover of this novel, it isn't an alternate history. Instead, it's a flat, disappointing fantasy that uses characters and a setting familiar to any student of history. It's not even an original fantasy -- Turtledove wrote World War II into a fantastic setting with his Darkness books. Instead, this feels like a favor; a book written for a comparatively new fantasy/SF publisher.
The story revolves around a German officer who, during the final days of WWII, is transported to a fantasy world after a battle in the Berlin museum. The officer, named Hasso Pemsel, is thrown into a conflict between a race of tall, beautiful blondes and a race of short, swarthy, dark-haired people. Pemsel, having been indoctrinated into all aspects of the Nazi ideal, naturally sides with the blondes.
And from there, the story devolves into a paper-thin moralistic tale detailing Pemsel's switch from the brutal blondes, who are mercilessly cruel, to the dark-haired people who are more kindly but also more primitive. Some of the secondary characters Pemsel encounters are interesting, but Pemsel himself seems to fall into the authorial trap of "the Good German." Far too often, authors lacking practice at writing WWII German characters seem to think that all Germans during the Nazi era are just waiting to turn on Hitler and embrace democracy and apple pie.
So it goes with Pemsel. Though Turtledove has a base to build upon with a character who has been through six years of war already, Pemsel seems to simply be a recycled Heinrich Jäger or Colonel Sabrino (from Turtledove's WorldWar and Darkness series, respectively). Pemsel also has prodigious amounts of sex from almost the first pages of the novel, which feels like nothing more than a sop to the adolescent audience that normally purchases Turtledove books.
The setting Turtledove finds himself in is reminiscent of WWII, and even Pemsel himself remarks on the similarity. The characters are somewhat shaken up -- the blondes are led by someone more in line with Mussolini than Hitler -- but the geography is much the same. The blondes are fighting an empire that is deep inland, and their goal is the enemy's capital city, which has cold winters.
I halfway expected Turtledove to turn Pemsel into something like Leo Frankowski's Crosstime Engineer, building a modern, gunpowder-wielding army from scratch. But although some of that sort of world-building happens, it doesn't happen to the extent that I had hoped. Even magic, which is introduced early in the story, is largely ignored except as an obstacle to get around, rather than a means to reproduce an industrial economy, as was done in the Darkness series.
But there are interesting elements of the story. Turtledove's manner of expressing Pemsel's struggles to learn the foreign languages of the fantasy world is particularly well-done, and there isn't much of the typical Turtledove repetition that is particularly common in his multi-volume works. Still, the bad parts outweigh the good. I also must point out that the printing in my copy was crooked, with the blocks of text edging dangerously near the page edge in some places. I'd fault the publisher even more if I didn't know that the company has been around for scarcely more than a decade.
I can't say I recommend this book, except for hard-core Turtledove fans, and I'd recommend even they get this book used or from the library. I'm afraid that this book may do to Night Shade Books what Newt Gingrich's 1945 did for Baen. Baen invested heavily in selling 1945 based on Gingrich's name, but that strategy fared poorly and almost bankrupted the publisher. I sincerely hope that Night Shade did not take a similar approach with Turtledove's name and this book.
By Harry Turtledove
ISBN 978-1-59780-130-0
Two stars out of five.
Pros: Interesting color and description.
Cons: Flat characters, simplistic story, limited characterization, poor printing
Despite the name emblazoned on the cover of this novel, it isn't an alternate history. Instead, it's a flat, disappointing fantasy that uses characters and a setting familiar to any student of history. It's not even an original fantasy -- Turtledove wrote World War II into a fantastic setting with his Darkness books. Instead, this feels like a favor; a book written for a comparatively new fantasy/SF publisher.
The story revolves around a German officer who, during the final days of WWII, is transported to a fantasy world after a battle in the Berlin museum. The officer, named Hasso Pemsel, is thrown into a conflict between a race of tall, beautiful blondes and a race of short, swarthy, dark-haired people. Pemsel, having been indoctrinated into all aspects of the Nazi ideal, naturally sides with the blondes.
And from there, the story devolves into a paper-thin moralistic tale detailing Pemsel's switch from the brutal blondes, who are mercilessly cruel, to the dark-haired people who are more kindly but also more primitive. Some of the secondary characters Pemsel encounters are interesting, but Pemsel himself seems to fall into the authorial trap of "the Good German." Far too often, authors lacking practice at writing WWII German characters seem to think that all Germans during the Nazi era are just waiting to turn on Hitler and embrace democracy and apple pie.
So it goes with Pemsel. Though Turtledove has a base to build upon with a character who has been through six years of war already, Pemsel seems to simply be a recycled Heinrich Jäger or Colonel Sabrino (from Turtledove's WorldWar and Darkness series, respectively). Pemsel also has prodigious amounts of sex from almost the first pages of the novel, which feels like nothing more than a sop to the adolescent audience that normally purchases Turtledove books.
The setting Turtledove finds himself in is reminiscent of WWII, and even Pemsel himself remarks on the similarity. The characters are somewhat shaken up -- the blondes are led by someone more in line with Mussolini than Hitler -- but the geography is much the same. The blondes are fighting an empire that is deep inland, and their goal is the enemy's capital city, which has cold winters.
I halfway expected Turtledove to turn Pemsel into something like Leo Frankowski's Crosstime Engineer, building a modern, gunpowder-wielding army from scratch. But although some of that sort of world-building happens, it doesn't happen to the extent that I had hoped. Even magic, which is introduced early in the story, is largely ignored except as an obstacle to get around, rather than a means to reproduce an industrial economy, as was done in the Darkness series.
But there are interesting elements of the story. Turtledove's manner of expressing Pemsel's struggles to learn the foreign languages of the fantasy world is particularly well-done, and there isn't much of the typical Turtledove repetition that is particularly common in his multi-volume works. Still, the bad parts outweigh the good. I also must point out that the printing in my copy was crooked, with the blocks of text edging dangerously near the page edge in some places. I'd fault the publisher even more if I didn't know that the company has been around for scarcely more than a decade.
I can't say I recommend this book, except for hard-core Turtledove fans, and I'd recommend even they get this book used or from the library. I'm afraid that this book may do to Night Shade Books what Newt Gingrich's 1945 did for Baen. Baen invested heavily in selling 1945 based on Gingrich's name, but that strategy fared poorly and almost bankrupted the publisher. I sincerely hope that Night Shade did not take a similar approach with Turtledove's name and this book.
