I'm not sure what I can say about 'Breakthroughs' that wasn't also true of the previous two installments in this series. It has a few interesting turns, and not alot of them I can talk about without disclosing the entirety of the books.In short, this deals with the alternate history in which the South Won the Civil War, and now, in the 1910's, The English, French, Confederates and Russians wage off against the German-Austria-American alliance.At this junction the war finally 'turns' and the stalemate begins to end. Both sides, the victor and the loser, begin to deal with the impending inevitability of the war. There are quite a few obvious historical 'nods' to those who know the history of what comes. For example, through the entirety of the series Turtledove has obviously been setting up a particular low-ranking character as a future 'hitler' analogue. Some characters we've walked through three books with die. Some return but injured or damaged in one way or another. Both civilians and those in the military. It's actually the former, those dealing with issues of occupation, of loved ones far away, of the changing realities imposed upon life in general that I find most interesting. The period following the Great War in our time line was fraught with social and political changes and this book, while doing a great job of 'capping' the series in terms of the War ,made me all the more curious to see how these changes would play out in a very different world, with a very different history.Basically if you liked the series to this point, Turtledove isn't going to let you down.
Finally the long slog is over. It took three months of my life to finish these three books while I was in a WW1 period and by the third book I felt like it was a challenge more than anything, what it must have felt like to fight WW1. Turtledove takes us through the fictional WW1 on American soil in excruciating detail following numerous characters on all fronts and aspects of the war. I wonder over and over if its effective to document a war that never happened in such fine detail and I alternated between being enamored and bored stiff. The Anne characters just got downright annoying toward the end, and the book really lacked any build up or action until the breakthrough which was even then pretty anti-climatic. His portrayals are well thought out and accurate and painful to read about the racism of this period. His ideas are innovative but they book just seemed to slow, long, and did I mention slow at time. One redeeming aspect was the death of a key character at the end. I then understood a lot of the slow scenes regarding this character and his family, the daily slaughter that went on for years gets filtered through this one man and the sadness resonates. It is with that character that I think the author did his best work and showed that like the real WW1 the slaughter was so great that you have to view it on a personal side. Finishing this series more like an life milestone than a book finished, pfeuh, time to move on.
What do You think about Breakthroughs (2001)?
The conclusion to the series doesn't exactly break any new territory. It simply finishes the already-obvious direction that the previous book has set in motion. There are a couple of surprising character deaths, but otherwise nothing needs to be said about this book that hasn't already been said about the others in the series.The end of this war, just like with real history's WWI, leaves an opening for the defeated side to harbour a "stabbed in the back" mentality. This leads to the next series in Turtledove's universe.
—Chen-song Qin
This sucks! No, not the book. The book is quite well written and interesting. In it, Mr. Turtledove wraps up the First World War. Well, the first world war of this particular alternate reality. You know, the one where the South had won the Civil War. Now the USA and CSA are fighting across the trenches, just like the European powers. Like the previous volumes of the trilogy, Mr. Turtledove tells the tale from the perspective of a variety of people: soldier and civilian; rich and poor; damnyankee, reb and canuck. That's where the problem lies. Some of those plot threads end somewhat happily, others, not so well. One... ah, one just sucks. It's good writing. It shows an important facet of life during wartime but... I won't spoil the surprise. I hated it. Still, seeing how I have the other two volumes of the trilogy, I'll track down a copy of this one to put on my shelf. sigh....
—The other John
http://nhw.livejournal.com/1026099.html[return][return]The book is the third of a trilogy about an alternate history war ending in 1917, where the US and Germany are fighting a bitter trench combat against Britain/Canada, the Confederate States of America fifty years after their victory in the War of Secession, and France. All the action takes place on or near the North American continent. The major one of the "Breakthroughs" of the title is the penetration of Confederate lines on the Kentucky/Tennessee front by the US army's new battle machines (known as "barrels" rather than "tanks" in this world), under the command of septuagenarian George Armstrong Custer, as a result of which the Confederate front collapses, the US re-occupies Washington, annexes chunks of Canada and declares Quebec independent, and the war and the book both end.[return][return]Turtledove has about a dozen viewpoint characters, telling the story from the point of view of the military and civilians affected by the war. US president Teddy Roosevelt pops into the narrative now and then, and the defeated CSA president appears at the end, but on the whole this is the story of the little people. It is detailed and well worked out, but didn't quite grab me as much as I was hoping. I very much enjoyed Turtledove's Hugo-winning novella "Down in the Bottomlands", and wonder if the discipline of the shorter form enables him to concentrate quality rather better than in a trilogy of 650-page books.
—Nicholas Whyte
